All eyes on the Presidential election
The Presidential election will be held on July 17. The Bharatiya Janata
Party, with its regular allies and new-found friends, should be able to see any
non-controversial candidate through. Unless the ruling party scares away all
its supporting parties by projecting a polarising candidate, the opposition
cannot expect to put up anything but a token fight.
Ideally, the Congress would like to wait for the BJP to announce its
candidate before revealing its own. The BJP might have in mind some eminent people not directly involved in
politics in order to appeal to a broader political spectrum. What is certain is
that there will be no consensus candidate. In the current political milieu the BJP would be well advised to
project a non-controversial and eminently recognizable person as the
Presidential candidate.
Now, will the good sense prevail upon the political parties so that the
president can become the real watch dog of Indian democracy? Will they amend
the constitution to the effect of reverting the power of the president? It is
surprising that Mrs Indira Gandhi clipped the wings of the President by the amendment of
the constitution but no party, however strong critic of Mrs Gandhi, talked
about reconsidering the position. Actually, if any damage is inflicted upon the
Indian democracy no party takes any initiative to restore that. No party wants
to rectify the root cause of the problem, may be, for the fear of losing the
scope of fishing in troubled waters.
The President of our country is a mere constitutional head with no
executive power. His role gets prominent only in cases when any party fails to
get the magic figure during Lok Sabha elections. Otherwise he is bound by
constitutional obligations to go by the cabinet decisions. Under such
circumstances whether the presidential candidate is a distinguished scholar or
an eminent constitutional expert does not matter. The presidential election
turns out to be the battle of ego between the parties in power and in
opposition. Every political party wants his trusted man to hold the lofty post
for the smooth political journey without any hitch. If the President returns a
bill for reconsideration the ego of the parties get hurt although it is well known
that the President is bound to sign the bill.
The political parties should build a consensus that they will not waste
time, energy and money at least for the purpose of election for a post which
has been reduced to a mere titular head. Why the BJP should opt for a
'consensus' candidate since it can make one President of their choice. Was
there such a demand to Congress party to put a consensus candidate? Never. They
used to select their own man (or woman) and imposed upon the candidate for
other parties to support. Then why a change from Hindu side now?
It is unfortunate that as of now, there seems to be no person who can
emerge as consensus candidate for all parties and perform presidential duties
impartially. Let us face it square: the post of Indian President is almost a farce - in that while he/she
is defined as the "be all and end all" of the Constitution and of all
things under the Parliament/Judiciary and Executive, the President in practice
is a mere "rubber stamp" of the Cabinet, with no practical power to
take individual (Constitutionally provided) action. Do we really need a Costly
Office of the embellishment called President?
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