Prime Minister of India: Position and Powers of the Prime Minister of India!
The Prime minister is the key stone of the cabinet arch. If a Prime Minister resigns, the entire Council goes with him or her. The Prime Minister’s special position is that of the first among equals.
(i) The Prime Minister is the leader of the parliamentary party where the party commands an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha.
(ii) He has the power of selecting other ministers and also of advising the President to dismiss any one of them individually or require any one of them to resign. Virtually the Ministers hold office at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.
(iii) The Prime Minister takes decisions with regard to assignment of various ministries to individual ministers. He may transfer a Minister from one Department to another.
(iv) As Chairperson of the Cabinet, he summons its meetings and presides over them.
(v) The resignation or death of the Prime minister dissolves the Cabinet. In case of a Minister such happening only creates a vacancy.
(vi) The Prime Minister stands between the President and the Cabinet. Communications relating to policy are made only through the Prime Minister.
(vii) The Prime Minister is responsible for ensuring supervision and coordination over all other departments of the Union Government.
(viii) The Prime minister is also the ex-officio Chairperson of the Planning Commission.
Can a Prime Minister belonging to a party that has absolute majority of its Members in the Lok Sabha and also in the Rajya Sabha turn into a dictator?
The answer is both Yes and No.
There are a number of built in checks. Any Prime Minister attempting to turn into a dictator would need to over ride ail the checks. There is the opposition which shall have to be locked up. There is the party that may have to be silenced. Then there is the judiciary which could be made ineffective through constitutional amendments.
The President has to be docile and incapable of asserting. The press and the media would need to be put under strict censorship. Honest bureaucrats will have to be terrorized. Experience has shown that even if all these conditions are met, public opinion would ultimately assert. A Prime Minister disregarding public opinion may be able to continue in office for some time but not for all times or even a long time.
A Prime Minister running a coalition of political parties or dependent on any political party outside the government for support is forced to exercise his or her powers under a number of restrictions. The stability of the Prime Minister remains perpetually threatened and performance of the government suffers badly. India has been experiencing such problems since 1989.
Any government at the Centre or the States can show results if it has freedom to take decisions and also time to implement them. If the Prime Minister is subjected to contradictory pulls and pressures, the performance of the government is very adversely affected. Similarly if there are frequent changes in government, the results of new policy measures fail to show.