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Who Should Be NDA's Prime Ministerial Candidate?

POSTED BY Buzz ON Jun 19, 2012 AT 19:52 IST , Edited At: Jun 19, 2012 19:52 IST

The NDA is unable to come up with the name of an acceptable name for the presidential contest against UPA's Pranab Mukherjee. The Bihar chief minister has set the cat amongst the pigeons by bringing up the question of who should be NDA's candidate for Prime Minister instead. It should be someone secular, he feels, and Bihar's deputy CM, BJP's Sushil Kumar Modi agrees. So never mind the presidency, who do you think should lead the NDA in the next Lok Sabha elections as its PM candidate?

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Excerpts from Nitish Kumar's interview to the Economic Times:

You have recently said that the next prime minister should have secular credentials. Was your comment aimed at nudging your coalition partner, BJP, to name NDA's next prime ministerial candidate?

I have explained my preference for the leader. We have projected our prime ministerial candidate in every election since 1996. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the NDA's prime ministerial nominee in 1996 and 1998. The alliance projected Atalji again in 1999 and 2004. And it was Advaniji in 2009. The NDA will have to declare its nominee. The electorate should know who they are voting for and who will lead the country. The NDA should have a leader who can feel for the underdeveloped states like Bihar. It should not be someone who can develop developed states, but who has a feel for underdeveloped states.

Do you think it is already time for NDA to name its candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls?

NDA should declare its candidate in advance. This leader should be acceptable to every constituent of the alliance. To me, the leader of the coalition should have secular credentials. It should be someone who has absolute faith in democratic values. In a multi-religious and multi-lingual country like ours, the leader should not have rough edges in his personality. An alliance can win the confidence of the people only if the leader is seen as accommodating....

You have declared Bihar out of bounds for Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi...

BJP has capable leaders in Bihar to lead the alliance's campaign. We have been doing it since 1996. We don't need external assistance. We have bettered our performance in every election since 1996. I have cordial relations with Bihar BJP. But if someone is bent on spoiling this relationship, I cannot help.

Read Nitish Kumar's full interview at the Economic Times

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POSTED BY Buzz ON Jun 19, 2012 AT 19:52 IST, Edited At: Jun 19, 2012 19:52 IST

Waiting For An Authoritarian Leader?

POSTED BY Buzz ON May 28, 2012 AT 23:27 IST , Edited At: May 28, 2012 23:27 IST

Aditya Sinha in the DNA:

What Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s pusillanimity — and there’s no end of it in sight, for despite the hints that Congress President Sonia Gandhi drops for him to move on and allow someone else to helm the remaining two years of UPA-2, he pretends deafness and settles deeper into his chair — has done is made a lot of otherwise fence-sitting Indians yearn for a strongman to run the country. This may not be all desirable once it happens: an authoritarian leader is likely to ram through unpopular policy measures; industrialists who are not used to taking orders will call him arrogant (as we saw at the start of this column); and even if the UPA-2 drops its Unique Identification project, an authoritarian leader is likely to implement it and make it more intrusive than imagined.

Yet whatever the pitfalls, both visible and unforeseeable, the fact is that Modi may never get a more conducive atmosphere to becoming prime minister (unless the 2014 election gives us a non-Congress, non-BJP government; chances are that the competing ambitions within such a government will lead to its early fall and make the voter yearn even more for a strongman).

Read on at DNA: Congress Hands It To Modi On A Platter

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POSTED BY Buzz ON May 28, 2012 AT 23:27 IST, Edited At: May 28, 2012 23:27 IST

Three Questions On Narendra Modi

POSTED BY Buzz ON Nov 15, 2011 AT 23:57 IST , Edited At: Nov 15, 2011 23:57 IST

Nov 14: At a Sadbhavna Fast at Patan, in Vadodara

Two comments on the recent Sardarpura verdict in which 31 people were convicted of crimes including murder during post-Godhra riots:

Aditya Sinha in the DNA:

If Modi thinks that the lack of proof of a chain of culpability on technical grounds is going to be enough, he has another think coming. And no matter how compromised the credibility of police officer Sanjiv Bhatt may be, Modi’s government’s attempts to discredit him mirror the clumsy attempts by the Congress party to discredit Anna Hazare’s team.

As much as Modi’s aggression and ruthlessness may appeal to that section of the Indian middle class which thinks it is high time India kicked into a higher gear, it does not appeal to most other Indians; and no one can become prime minister unless they appeal to a majority of Indians (we don’t have direct elections to the post, but even in pre- or post-poll tie-ups, regional leaders are going to think twice about hitching their fortunes to this man). India Inc can’t stop gushing about how Modi is the man of the future, and how he will be the one to take India to the next stage of rapid economic growth, but these are contestable claims. I wonder whether or not Gujarat, which has traditionally seen high economic activity in India, would have grown without Modi at the helm. I also wonder how many Gujarati industrialists are willing to concede that their rise and success is due to Modi. In any case, the crony capitalism and the corporate complicity in big-ticket corruption during past few years are evidence of how little India Inc really cares for India.

And then, Ruchir Joshi in the Telegraph:

This verdict is only among the first strands but, perhaps, along with the testimonies of the police officers, R.B. Shreekumar, Sanjeev Bhatt and others, it signals the ultimate unravelling of the whole carpet of vicious lies under which the Hindutwats have been trying to shove their 2002 pogrom.

It’s important that this verdict arrives at a time when a huge campaign is under way to efface Narendra Modi’s crimes and propel him forward as the future prime minister. Even as his cheerleaders shout on about his incorruptible efficiency, the true nature of the Modi-raj is now ever more openly on display. If you’re a Gujarati who was involved in attacking Muslims in 2002, till recently you could count on the Namo machinery doing everything possible to protect you from punishment. However, if you were a Gujarati who was a victim of rape or violence in March-April 2002, you had to learn to live under an energetically enforced load-shedding of justice.

Ruchir Joshi concludes his piece optimistically:

Things won’t subside. As long as there are two brave lawyers and three shrill but fearless NGO activists, truth will out, as the Sardarpura case indicates. When that happens, the time for apologies will be long past and the planners of the massacre will have no place left to go, perhaps not even China.

What do you think?

Do you think the long arm of the law will eventually catch up with Narendra Modi, as Joshi argues? Or
Do you think that even if he escapes on legal technicalities, he will still never be accepted by the majority of Indians as Prime Minister, as Sinha argues? Or
Do you think that he will not only escape from the clutches of the law but will also make it to the prime ministerial chair?

Please keep your answers civil and to the point.

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FILED IN: BJP|Gujarat: Riots 2002|Prime Minister of India|Narendra Modi|Gujarat

POSTED BY Buzz ON Nov 15, 2011 AT 23:57 IST, Edited At: Nov 15, 2011 23:57 IST

Why The PM Must Be Covered Under The Lokpal

POSTED BY Buzz ON Jul 03, 2011 AT 07:33 IST , Edited At: Jul 03, 2011 07:33 IST

Anil Divan in the Hindu:

It is important to observe that in most of the Lokpal bills, including the 2010 government draft (except the 1985 version), the Prime Minister is within the ambit of the Lokpal.

The Constitution

Under the Indian Constitution there is no provision to give immunity to the Prime Minister, Chief Ministers or Ministers. Under Article 361, immunity from criminal proceedings is conferred on the President and the Governor (formerly the Rajpramukh) only “during his term of office.”

So what is the principle behind such immunity being given? The line is clearly drawn. Constitutional heads who do not directly exercise executive powers are given immunity as heads of state. Active politicians such as Ministers, who cannot remain aloof from the hurly-burly of electoral and party politics, ethical or unethical, honest or corrupt, are not given any immunity. They are subject to penal laws and criminal liability.

The basic structure of the Constitution clearly denies immunity to the Prime Minister.

Read on at the Hindu

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer concurs:

Lord Acton, the great British jurist, rightly said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The Prime Minister is the custodian of the considerable state power. He has to be under public scrutiny.

Therefore I have clearly expressed the view that if power is to be subject to public investigation and scrutiny, he has to be within the ambit of the Lokpal Bill and cannot be exempted from it. Likewise, our judiciary is the watchdog of the Executive. People look up to the judges to ensure that the Executive does not misbehave. The judiciary must be accessible to every citizen who has a grievance against the robed brethren. When Parliament resorts to misconduct and violates the Constitution, people appeal to the judges for a remedy.

In this view, the judges are sublime and must have control over the Executive and the parliamentary process. Both these instruments are under the Lokpal's proposed jurisdiction. There is no case of exemption of these authorities.

I am sorry that some high Chief Justices have expressed a different view. I disagree. The greatest menace before India today is that the judiciary itself is corrupt and no action is being taken. There must be a militant, active nationwide movement against corruption. A powerful instrument must be set up for this if the confidence of the people is to be preserved.

The judiciary and the Prime Minister shall be under the Lokpal. The Lokpal itself must be of the highest order and should be plural in number.

The Prime Minister and the judiciary shall be like Caesar's wife: above suspicion.

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POSTED BY Buzz ON Jul 03, 2011 AT 07:33 IST, Edited At: Jul 03, 2011 07:33 IST

But What About The PM?

POSTED BY Buzz ON Jun 15, 2011 AT 21:47 IST , Edited At: Jun 15, 2011 21:47 IST

In the context of the Lokpal debate, much has been said about the elected government versus the "non-elected" "Civil Society" and how bodies like the NAC and even the Planning Commission in some ways could be used as analogous to the Lokpal Drafting Committee.

Writing in the First Post, Vivek H Dehejia notes:

There are two important differences, however, which make an American-style CEA [Council of Economic Advisors] more legitimate than an Indian-style NAC. First, members of the CEA, while nominated by the President, must be confirmed by the US Senate, similar to other high-ranking government appointments such as members of the Cabinet. They cannot simply be handpicked by the government and appointed without consultation, as are members of our NAC.

Second, and equally important, the CEA’s role is purely to advise the President, who then proposes legislation to the Congress taking the CEA’s advice as one input. Crucially, they are not involved in lobbying on matters of legislation, nor are they involved in drafting legislation. NAC is involved in both of these.

And then he cuts to the chase, making the obvious point that many have shied away from underlining:

In India, members of the Rajya Sabha are elected, albeit indirectly, and therefore constitutional jurisprudence may hold that there is no bar in a PM coming from the upper chamber. Politically, the argument is not so clear-cut. In practice, being elected to the Rajya Sabha really boils down to being put forward for election in a state in which your party holds a majority, and you are almost certain to win by default.

That is why, although not written in our Constitution, we too shared an unwritten convention that the PM should sit in the Lok Sabha, who thereby gains legitimacy by being directly elected by voters in a particular constituency. We may have had such a convention before the advent of the UPA government, but that has clearly gone out of the window. Perhaps that is something else those critical of the role of civil society in our current political configuration may wish to give heed to.

Read the full piece here

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FILED IN: Lokayukta & Lokpal|NAC-National Advisory Council|Parliament|Planning Commission|Prime Minister of India

POSTED BY Buzz ON Jun 15, 2011 AT 21:47 IST, Edited At: Jun 15, 2011 21:47 IST

Is Manmohan Singh Prime Minister Material?

POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 31, 2009 AT 07:39 IST , Edited At: Jul 31, 2009 08:42 IST

R. Jagannathan in the DNA wonders whether prime minister Manmohan Singh has risen to his level of less competence:

Was his goof-up at Sharm el-Sheikh, where he agreed to delink terror from a composite dialogue with Pakistan and also inserted Balochistan needlessly into the joint statement, just a one-off or part of his larger makeup?

Manmohan Singh lacks some of the essential skills needed to be PM in a diverse nation. But that does not mean he can't be PM. To succeed, though, he needs people who will cover up for his weaknesses. Pranab Mukherjee is one possible answer. He did his part in the last Lok Sabha when he fended off the left on the nuke deal till the Congress was sure it could win a vote of confidence.

Read: PM and the Peter Principle

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FILED IN: Prime Minister of India|Sharm-el-Sheikh|Manmohan Singh|Balochistan

POSTED BY Sundeep ON Jul 31, 2009 AT 07:39 IST, Edited At: Jul 31, 2009 08:42 IST

Who Will Make The Best PM?

POSTED BY Sundeep ON Apr 09, 2009 AT 23:54 IST , Edited At: Apr 10, 2009 00:09 IST

The Week, as reported by PTI, too has joined the surveys and opinion polls bandwagon after India Today last week, and its findings are pretty much in keeping with the rest of the surveys, broadly:

	UPA	NDA	TF/Ors
The Week	234	186	112
India Today	196-205	172-181	169-178

Details -- sample size, polling dates -- of the Week's poll are not available but the differences seem to be because the Week is counting SP & RJD, LJP as part of the UPA, whereas IT was counting them in others. What is fascinating to me, however, is the differences in perceptions as to who would make the best PM in these two polls. The Week's is the first poll that shows Mr Advani leading the race, not just over AB Vajpayee but the other eminences as well: (%)