President To Seek Allies’ Support Letters If Nobody Gets Majority

NEW DELHI: President Pranab Mukherjee may not invite the single largest pre-poll combination to form the government unless it provides letters of support from more parties to prove that it has the required numbers.

After extensive consultations on how to ascertain who is best suited to provide a stable government in a hung House scenario, Mukherjee seems to have concluded that the contenders for power ought to back up their claims of majority support by producing letters of support from their post-poll allies.

“He wants to make sure that those who stake claim to form government actually enjoy majority support in the House,” said a source familiar with the details of the deliberations Mukherjee has been holding in order to ensure that the next regime turns out to be a stable one.

He has been advised that this could be done only by seeking letters of support from post-poll alliance partners, as was done on an earlier occasion.

After Rajiv Gandhi refused to form government despite Congress emerging as the single largest party in 1989, the then president R Venkataraman invited V P Singh to form government as the leader of Janata Dal, which managed to cobble together a post-poll alliance.

The precedent was followed by Shankar Dayal Sharma in 1996 to invite Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led BJP to form the government even though it had only 161 members and absolutely no chance of reaching the magic figure of 272. BJP was surprised by the invite, though it grabbed the opportunity to form the first-ever saffron regime at the Centre. With the “secular” parties combining against him, Vajpayee’s government quit after 13 days.

Sharma’s successor KR Narayanan chose to play safe when Vajpayee staked his second claim two years later, and insisted on seeing letters of support even when the BJP-led NDA pre-poll alliance had won the majority.

The use of the same yardstick by Narayanan a year later resulted in huge embarrassment for Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The Congress president had claimed she had the support of 272 but with SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav backing out at the last minute, came short when the President asked for letters of support.

When contacted by TOI, noted constitutional expert and former attorney general Soli J Sorabjee suggested that producing letters of support may not be necessary if the President is satisfied that the single largest party or pre-poll coalition holds the prospect of providing a viable government after an election which fails to throw up an outright winner.

“If the President is satisfied on that count, then there is no need to seek letters of support from post-poll alliance partners. After inviting the largest coalition or party to form government, he could given them reasonable time, say a week or two, to prove its majority on the floor of the House,” Sorabjee said.

“The President need not test the strength of the party or coalition in the Lok Sabha before inviting it to form government. The test of strength is in the House and not in Rashtrapati Bhavan. Though, there is nothing in the Constitution which bars the President from seeking letters of support from post-poll alliance partners, it sounds a little unethical,” he added.