President vs Prime Minister : Who is More Powerful

We always have a question that in Indian Government, when it comes to President VS Prime Minister, who is more powerful. Read it in my article and get your doubt cleared.

Introduction

In India, we have republic government i.e. a political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect a person to represent them or a group of people to form a government whose head is not a monarch of the state. The Constitutional forefathers have provided us the Parliamentary system in which the Union executive is consist of The President and the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister. The President is the head of the state and the chief executive. As British system, all executive action at the center is expressed to be taken in his name. The Constitution formally vests many powers and functions in the President but he has no function to discharge in his discretion or in his individual judgment unlike the President of United States of America. President acts on the advice of his council of ministers and, therefore, the PM and the Council of Ministers constitutes the real and effective executive.

Comparison between the powers and function

Under Article 53 of the Constitution, the executive power of the Union is vested in the President who is empowered to exercise it either directly or through officers subordinate to him, while the Prime Minister enjoys the vast power and works as head of the Union Government. Both the Prime Minister and the President hold power but it is a matter of time who actually exercise it.

Here we’ll discuss the powers and functions of both the heads in the different sphere as follows:

1. Executive Sphere

Article 53(1) provides that the President can exercise his function either directly or through officers subordinate to him. This provision permits the exercise of the executive power vested in the President by the Ministers and other officials. Though he may not be the ‘real’ head of the administration, all officers of the Union shall be his subordinates and he shall have a right to be informed of the affairs of the Union[Article78(b)]. The administrative power also includes the power to appoint and remove the high dignitaries of the State. Under the Constitution, the President shall have the power to appoint the PM of India, other Ministers of the Union, the Attorney-General India, the CAG of India, Judges of Supreme Court and High Courts, the chief and other members of Election Commission, etc.

The President has all the executive powers, however, in actual practice, he or she acts only as the advisor of the PM and the Cabinet.

All major appointments of the Union Government are virtually made by the PM and all the major decision-making bodies like the Union Cabinet, Cabinet Committees etc. that function under his supervision and direction. It is the PM who selects his cabinet and the other ministers, not the President.

2. Legislative Sphere

The President is an integral part of the law making process. By virtue of Article 123 of the Constitution, the President has the power to promulgate ordinances. The president shall have the power to summon or prorogue the House of Parliament and to dissolve the Lower House i.e. Lok Sabha. He shall also have the power to summon a joint sitting of both the Houses of Parliament in the case of a deadlock between them. A Bill will not be an Act of the Indian Parliament unless and until it receives the assent of the President.

Although the Constitution confers the power to promulgate the ordinance on the President but like other matters, he acts on the advice of the Council of Ministers and, therefore, the ordinance-making power is vested effectively in the Central Executive. As the Honorable Supreme Court has stated: “The Ordinance is promulgated in the name of the President and in a constitutional sense on his satisfaction: it is in truth promulgated on the advice of his Council of Ministers and on their satisfaction.” In actual practice, the decision to convene A House is taken by its Leader in consultation with his Cabinet colleagues, the Speaker, and probably, the leaders of the opposition Groups. Generally, the President gives his assent to a Bill to be an Act on ministerial advice. Convention has been made that the President dissolves the House on the advice of the PM and the Cabinet and not of his own.

Like executive functions, the PM here too imparts significant influence on the decisions of the President.

3. Judicial Sphere

The President enjoys the power to grant pardon, reprieve, or remission of punishment to any convict, particularly in all cases involving punishment of death. He appoints judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court with the consultation of such judges of Supreme Courts and High Courts as he may deem fit to consult. The President can refer any matter of constitutional law to the Supreme Court for advice. However, that advice is not binding on the President.

In spite of having these vast powers the President does not act on his own, President seeks the ‘aid & advice’ of the Council of Ministers headed by the Prime Minister.

4. Military Sphere

The Supreme Command of the Defence Forces, of course, is vested in the President of India, but the Constitution expressly lays down that the exercise of this power shall be regulated by law. This means that though the President may have the power to take action as the declaration of war or peace or the employment of Defence Forces, it is competent for Parliament to regulate or control the exercise of such powers.

Here like previous ones, the President is not free to take actions on his own, he must have to act in accordance of his Council of Ministers.

5. Diplomatic Sphere

Like the head of other states, the President of India represents India in international affairs and has the power to appoint Indian representatives to other countries and receives diplomatic representatives of other states, however, the actual diplomatic power is enjoyed by the PM of the country. Prime Minister decides the diplomatic relations with foreign countries in consultation with his Cabinet.

All the foreign policies are decided by the PM, and hence, the President is only a face mask of the Government.

5. Emergency Powers

The President has been given wide powers to meet emergencies. The Constitution provides for three different categories of emergencies viz. National Emergency, State Emergency or failure of constitutional machinery in a state and, Financial Emergency. However, like other powers, this power to proclaim emergency cannot be exercised by the President all alone.

President proclaims emergency on the prior advice of the Cabinet and it is subject to the approval of the Parliament.

And there are many instances in the history when the Union Government has proclaimed an emergency in various states in the name of failure of constitutional machinery on the name of the President just to achieve certain political advantages and the President had to act like a puppet.

Evaluation

The President, on whole, has functioned as a constitutional head of the Indian Union. In the beginning constitutional experts were divided into three schools of thoughts. On the one hand, there were those like Granville Austin, C.H. Alexandrowicz, and M.C. setalvad, who took a broad view of constitutional provisions. They stated that the founding fathers deliberately opted for the Parliamentary form of government and the President is merely a constitutional head similar to that of the English Crown. Secondly, in contrary view, some took the ultra-literal view of certain constitutional provisions and draw the conclusion that the President under our Constitution is not a figurehead. The third school of thoughts took a middle position. Thus, K. Santhanam and A. Appadorai argued that while the President is the constitutional head of the state and acted ordinarily on the advice of the Ministers, he had unspecified ‘reserve’ powers, as guardian of the Constitution, to be used by him in his discretion.

Apart from these views, the constitutional practices have been different at different times. There had been an era when the President was actually been like a puppet and at some situations, the President has shown to the elected government what the Constitutional Head can do when it comes to using his powers. There have been instances when the President has used the special power of ‘pocket veto’ like President Giani Zail Singh in 1986 at the time of Postal Bill. In 1998 K.R. Narayanan repeated history by returning a Union Cabinet resolution seeking the imposition of President’s rule in Bihar and the suspension of the Assembly. In 2006, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam showed that he, too, was not a rubber-like constitutional head by refusing to approve the Office-of-Profit Bill.

Albeit the Constitution has provided such a vast power to the President and sometimes he has used it, for most of the time the State as well as the Government has been dominated by the Indian Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister in the Indian context is endowed with such a plentitude of powers as no other constitutional ruler in the world possesses, not even the President of the USA.

A Latin phrase suits better to the Indian PM is “inter stellas luna minore” that means “a moon among the lesser stars.” Even this may not be the correct estimate of the PM’s position. He is the key person in the government. In the Indian context, the PM is the keystone, not only of the Cabinet but of the political system.

Concluding Observation

The Constitution, the views of constitutional forefathers, the Supreme Court and the conventions & trends leaves absolutely no room for the doubt that the President must necessarily act in accordance with the advice of the Council of Ministers. The advice of the Council of Ministers is binding upon him. Any disgrace on the part of the President to disregard the advice of the Council of Minister will be tantamount to the violation of the Constitution and will make the President liable for impeachment. But President enjoys a marginal discretion in certain matters, as for example, the appointment of the PM(when the Lok Sabha is split with no majority party). The influence of PM over the President differs from PM to PM. If he is strong like Nehru, Indira, Rajiv and Modi, he will imprint his stamp on the Cabinet and the President, if he does not possess the qualities of leadership like V.P. Singh, P.V. Narsimha Rao or H.D. deve Gowda the entire system will lack decisiveness.

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