My next amendment (No. 147) deals with a very important point to which I wish to draw the earnest attention of the House. The draft article lays down that if the President is satisfied he might issue a Proclamation of emergency. Sir, when this House was discussing article 102 which deals with the Ordinance making power of the President, you, Sir, raised a very vital issue as to whether under this Constitution the President would be bound by the advice of his Council of Ministers. The Constitution provides for the President a Council of Ministers to aid and advise him in the exercise of his functions, but there is no injunction laid upon him to accept their advice. In reply to that Dr. Ambedkar observed that that matter would be gone into by the Drafting Committee and suitable changes would be made, but up till now, so far as I know, no changes in that direction have been brought before the House. Therefore that lacuna still exists. Today this new article invests the President with an extraordinary power which, as I said before, finds no parallel to the powers exercised by the executive head–nominal, figure-head, titular or otherwise–of any other democratic State in the world, monarchic or republican. Therefore this safeguard is to my mind absolutely necessary. The President must not act on his own but must consult his Council of Ministers and act upon their advice. If they advise him that such a grave emergency has arisen, then only should he be empowered by the Constitution to issue a Proclamation to that effect. He must not be invested with the sole and absolute right to issue a Proclamation by merely stating that he is satisfied. etc. This is not a mere academic point. This is a moot point. It is conceivable-God forbid that such a thing should arise-that the President and the Council of Ministers may not be seeing eye to eye with each other on various matters; there may be friction between them and the President may act on his own in the event of an emergency, without consulting his Council of Ministers. If that should happen, I shudder to think of what might befall our country. If the President goes ahead setting at naught the Council of Ministers, then the way will be paved for, firstly, a dictatorship and then perhaps to revolts and revolutions and things of that kind. It has been recognised by students of politics that the very provisions in the Weimar Constitution of the Third Republic of Germany giving extensive powers to the executive, coupled with the use made of the Power of dissolution, contributed to the rise of Herr Hitler and paved the way to his dictatorship resulting in what we all know. Compared to that article 48, of the Weimar Constitution, the provisions we are making under Chapter XI are far more drastic. I therefore earnestly appeal that this Chapter should not be passed in a hurry. It should be amended in such a way that not merely the liberty of the individual. But also the freedom and powers of the constituent units are not unduly suppressed. We should alter and revise the Chapter so as to see that the liberties guaranteed in this Constitution are real.
