AS each day passes, the memories of the sacrifices and sufferings of millions of innocent men, women and children during the times of Partition are getting blurred. The recent announcement of Prime Mi
A May 31 order banning on former security and intelligence personnel from publishing memoirs has come in for criticism. Former bureaucrats say it is untenable in law
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1 UNEASE: With PM Modi’s mass following, there are apprehensions that India may opt for a presidential system. Tribune photo
Madhav Godbole
Former Union Home Secretary
Looking at what is happening in the US, it is surprising that the presidential system is being advocated in India. Serious efforts were made during Indira Gandhi’s prime ministership to switch over to the presidential system. And it could well have become a reality as not only did the Congress have a two-thirds majority in both Houses of Parliament, but also had majority in nearly all state legislatures. Therefore, there would have been no difficulty in getting the requisite constitutional amendment passed for change over to the presidential system, as was seen in the series of other major amendments she brought about. I had written in my book, Indira Gandhi An era of Constitutional Democracy, that there must not be another case in history anywhere in the world where such legislations were sponsored b
If parliamentary constituencies are redrawn on the basis of the 2021 Census and the present criterion, the representation of states will be so lopsided as to pose a real challenge to India’s federalism. Due to the considerably lower rate of growth of population in the southern states, their representation is likely to go down, while that of the northern states will go up considerably. This unequal position is unlikely to be acceptable to the southern states and might lead to yet another north-south confrontation, as happened in the case of the country’s official language. This will also have other overtones as the BJP has been unable to make inroads in these states, except for Karnataka. Maharashtra is also now out of BJP’s hand. As a result, the representation of non-BJP parties will decline significantly. Inevitably, population as the sole basis for deciding representation in Parliament will have to be examined afresh and new criteria will have to be evolved.