New Delhi: Narendra Modi has resigned. The President of India, Droupadi Murmu has asked him to continue as caretaker government.
So why do news stories citing “sources” now say “NDA will form the government and the swearing in will be on June 8”? The hurry with sources announcing “June 8” is unseemly, as the process involving the transition of power when a party in power loses its majority, which the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Modi has done, is well laid out.
With the BJP being well below the majority mark of 272, 32 seats less than required for a single-party government, the President of India needs to weigh all possible options
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
There is much that needs to be done in the middle, irrespective of the results, but especially if no party has got a majority. This has been the case since 1991, when the Congress formed a single-party but minority government led by P.V. Narasimha Rao, all the way till 2009, when Manmohan Singh headed a coalition government.
Former Secretary General of the 14th Lok Sabha and 15th Lok Sabha and Lok Sabha Secretariat, P.D.T. Achary, speaking of “political parties beginning the exercise of government-making” as leaders are converging in Delhi for meetings of the NDA and INDIA. Achary says, “The Sarkaria Commission has said that if no party has a majority, it suggests that the largest pre-poll alliance is called to form the government. Then the single-largest party is given a chance, and then if they too are not ready, then post-poll alliances follow in the sequence.”
Senior advocate and MP Kapil Sibal says, “After resigning, the party/coalition wanting to stake a claim would need to meet and elect a leader who would then be invited, if s/he has the numbers to take oath as Prime Minister.”
Former PMO official and media advisor to Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru, says, “While Modi steps down as the Prime Minister of a single party majority government, he would take charge as Prime Minister of a coalition, heading a party without its own majority. Hence, Modi has to tender his resignation first as the head of a government that lost power, which he has done. He has to then demonstrate his 272 support and then only be invited to form a government. Till then he would be caretaker PM with no power to take any policy decisions.”
Former finance secretary has written about four possible scenarios, “First, the NDA forms the government under Modi’s leadership. Second, the NDA forms the government under a BJP leader other than Modi. Third, the NDA government will have a non-BJP Prime Minister. Fourth, the INDIA. bloc, with post-poll alliance support, forms the government at the Centre.”
In 1996, President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma had invited Atal Bihari Vajpayee to form the BJP’s first Union government, which lasted only 13 days as they could muster no support. Sharma was widely criticised for asking the single-largest party. In 1998, President K.R. Narayanan introduced the idea of “letters of support”, which Vajpayee had to tender.
When the first non-Congress government in India in 1977 took oath, it is important to remember that the Janata party which took office after Indira Gandhi, was officially formed on January 23, 1977. It gathered strength only post-poll, after the Congress’s breakaway leader, Babu Jagjivan Ram’s Congress for Democracy joined it among other leaders. The BJP’s ancestor, the Jana Sangh, was merged to form the Janata Party with Socialists. In 2004, too, Congress was the single-largest party and the single largest coalition (there need not be a coincidence of the two things at all times) but the United Progressive Alliance or UPA was also a post-poll formation.
