There is only one point which I would like to make before going to the next subject, though I have made a note of a number of points on this subject with which I cannot possibly deal with now, and it is the intricate question which my honourable Friend Mr. Gupte raised and I think it was also raised in this House on previous occasions also, though not explicitly. It has been mentioned that one of the chief defects of this Constitution is that we have not anywhere mentioned that the President is a Constitutional head and the future of the President’s powers is, therefore, doubtful. I am referring to this point merely because it has a certain amount of validity in that in certain dominions attached to the British Empire this problem has been raised because of the peculiar circumstances In which the Governor-General of that particular dominion has been acting in the past. Chief Justice Evatt, as he then was, Mr. Evatt the Minister for External Affairs in Australia, has written a book in which he wanted specific provisions to be made in regard to the exercise of power by the Governor-General as the Constitutional head of the Dominion and incidentally mentions therein that even in the case of the king of England it would be better if it is laid down that he should exercise this power in a certain manner and on certain occasions by means of a statute. This is a matter which has been examined by the Drafting Committee to some extent. The position of the President in a responsible Government is not the same as the position of a president in a representative Government like America and that is a mistake that a number of people in the House have been making, when they said that the President will be an autocrat, and no one appears to realize that the President has to act on the advice of the Prime Minister. There might be some truth in the charge made that the Prime Minister might be an autocrat. Yes, the Prime Minister would be an autocrat if the party that elects him as leader and the Parliament to which he is responsible are both inactive because the tenure of office of a Prime Minister is perhaps only that amount of time that is necessary to pass a vote of no confidence on him. How a Prime Minister can be an autocrat when his tenure of office is so limited, unless there are other reasons which gives him the pull both over the Parliament and his party, is difficult for me to understand. So far as the relationship of the President with the Cabinet is concerned. I must say that we have so to say completely copied the system of responsible Government that is functioning in Britain today; we have made no deviation from it and the deviations that we, have made are only such as are necessary because our Constitution is federal in structure. Otherwise, that is the scheme of responsible Government that is envisaged both in the Centre and in the units. So far as the units are concerned the responsibility of the ministers has perhaps been in a very small measure curtailed only to the extent that it is absolutely necessary and has been expressly laid down in the Constitution. Honourable Members will please note that in article 163 we have said that the Governor should take the advice of the ministers excepting where he has been expressly asked to act in his discretion. An honourable Member asked me today what that meant. That was necessary because of Schedule VI, paragraphs 9 and 18 referring to Assam, which is the only matter in which the Governor has to use his discretion; in paragraph 9 of the Sixth Schedule which is a matter of arbitration and in paragraph 18 of the Sixth Schedule he has to report to the President; otherwise, there is no discretionary power at all vested in the Governor and we want the Governor to act in a manner which would mean that he will be taking the advice of his ministers in all matters. It has been expressly laid down in regard to assent of bills which he had to reserve for the assent of the President by reason of the fact that it falls in the concurrent field or that it is a matter which relates to the High Courts. But the position of the President in not the same as the King of England because he has no prerogatives such as the King of England possesses. His part in the assent to Bill is a matter which has been defined. All the powers that are left to him are perhaps those in which there will be a marginal use of discretion, perhaps when there happens to be a question of dissolution of the Parliament that is the dissolution of the House of the People, the question of calling upon any particular person to form the Ministry and the question of dismissing the Ministry. Sir, the time at my disposal is very short but I would like to assure my honourable Friends that in all these points, the conventions that have grown round the powers of the King of England in so far as his relationship with his Cabinet is concerned today are sufficiently strong for us to rest content with the there will be no misuse of these marginal powers by the President. The power of the Prime Minister in England has been progressively increasing, and instances in which probably the King had to use his discretion, namely in 1924 when he agreed with the suggestion of Prime Minister MacDonald to dissolve the House and then again in 1931 when he called upon MacDonald to form the Government in spite of the fact that the party to which he belonged had gone over to the opposition, these were matters where the discretion were more or less of a marginal nature. There were subsequent instances, notably the instance where the Prime Minister felt that even the King should not remain on the throne because of certain things that he was going to do, his abdication and subsequently in matter in which he had to take the advice of the Prime Minister, in setting up of a temporary commission by counsellors to act in his stead. These and other things in England have more or less established that the Prime Minister’s advice is paramount, paramount in so far as the King cannot even call any people for consultation unless it be the Leader of the Opposition, and even then he has to tell the Prime Minister what transpired between them. The conventions are sufficiently strong and well established but a marginal instance might come into being and therefore, we cannot put in the Constitution precisely where the President must do this and what the Prime Minister can ask him to do and where he can use his judgment between two matters which are rather difficult to decide. Of course there may be an error or misassessment of facts or an error of judgement or it happens to be bona fide and it cannot be helped. We have considered this matter and on balance of considerations we felt that we ought to leave it to conventions and to such conventions that have been established in other countries following a system of responsible Government.
