Independent Indian: Work & Life of Professor Subroto Roy

A lawyer friend tells me she thinks it a “technicality” that there is no Lok Sabha or Parliament in India today despite eleven long days and nights having passed since the 15th Lok Sabha came to be elected by the people of India.  “At least we did not get Advani and Modi to rule”, is how she sought to justify the current circumstance.   I am afraid I think she has produced a non sequitur, and also forgotten the constitutional law she would have read as a student.

The best argument that I think the Government of India shall be able to give justifying their legal error in not having the 15th Lok Sabha up and running yet 11 days after India’s people have spoken would run something like this:

(1) The President of India invites a Council of Ministers led by a PM to form the government and has done so.

(2) The President must be satisfied that the PM commands a majority in the Lok Sabha, and the President has been satisfied by the 322  “letters of support” that the PM produced.

(3) The Government of the day calls parliamentary sessions and does so at its discretion, and the Government of the day headed by this PM has announced when it shall call the 15th Lok Sabha which will be in a few days yet.

Any such argument, I am afraid, would be specious because it simply puts the cart before the horse.

Parliament is sovereign in India, to repeat what I have said several times before.

Parliament is sovereign in India — not even the President who is the symbol of that sovereignty.  We do not follow the British quite exactly in this because we are a republic and not a monarchy.  In Britain sovereignty rests with “The King in Parliament”.  With us, Parliament is sovereign and the President is the symbol of that sovereignty.  In all matters of state, our President must act in a manner that Parliament and parliamentary law says.

Parliament is sovereign in India — not the Executive Government, certainly not its largest political party or its leader.

Parliament is sovereign in India because the people of India have chosen it to be so within the Constitution of India.

Parliament is sovereign in India and the people of India have elected the 15th Lok Sabha which has still not been allowed to meet eleven days later.

To the contrary, as noted days ago, the purported “Cabinet” of the 14th Lok Sabha, a dead institution, met on May 18 2009, some 48 hours after the 15th Lok Sabha had already been declared!   The 14th Lok Sabha in fact stood automatically dissolved in law when General Elections came to be announced.

Is all this merely a “technicality” as my friend believes?  I think not.

Executive Government in India derives its political legitimacy from being elected  by Parliament,  i.e., from holding the confidence of Parliament, and that means the Lok Sabha.

The Government of the day might  for sake of convenience have a prerogative of calling sessions of the 15th Lok Sabha once it has been constituted but the Government of the day cannot logically constitute a Lok Sabha after a General Election because it itself receives legitimacy from such a Lok Sabha.

If the 15th Lok Sabha has not met, confidence in any Executive has yet to be recorded, and hence any such Government has yet to receive legitimacy.

Do “322 letters of support” suffice?  Hardly.  They are signed after all by persons who have yet to take their seats in the Lok Sabha!  (Let us leave aside the fact that the PM, not being a member of the Lok Sabha, is in this case unable to be one of those 322 himself!)

Yet we have 79 “Ministers” of this new “Government” holding press-conferences and giving out free-bees and favours etc already.  As I have said before, Ambedkar, Nehru and others of their generation, plus Indira and Rajiv too, would all have been appalled.

Because the incompetence of the fascists and communists in the Opposition may continue to  be expected, it will be up to ordinary citizens and voters of India to point out such  simple truths whenever the Emperor is found to be naked.  (Our docile juvenile ingratiating media may well remain mostly hopeless.)

Subroto Roy