From Sardar Patel to Yogi Adityanath’s deputies, India has seen many deputy PMs & CMs. There’s no such post in the Constitution, but SC has said it’s ok.
New Delhi: Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot was Monday appointed deputy chief minister of Rajasthan. Nothing wrong in that, except that under our Constitution, there is no mention of such a post. Or even one for a deputy prime minister.
So, did Sachin Pilot or Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh violate any oath or rulebook in designating him the deputy chief minister? After all, why appoint somebody to a non-existent post? More importantly, why should a politician accept such a post?
There is an interesting history behind the love for the prefix “deputy” before prime minister or chief minister, one that includes several cases that went right up to the Supreme Court.
It all began with Sardar Patel
Independent India’s first Central government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru — this was two-and-a-half years before our Constitution was adopted — had Vallabhbhai Patel as deputy prime minister and home minister.
Members of the Constituent Assembly didn’t sweat much over whether the country should have a deputy PM or deputy chief ministers in the states.
But the unofficial rank of deputy PM and deputy CM has been held by several prominent politicians — most of them were given this post to assuage their feeling of hurt at having missed the real prize.
This was true in the case of Sardar Patel as well as others like Morarji Desai, Charan Singh and Lal Krishna Advani, the last deputy PM India has had.
In the case of others, the post was either seen as a reward of a balancing act — Jagjivan Ram, or Y.B. Chavan or Devi Lal.
Also read: 5 reasons why Rahul Gandhi picked Ashok Gehlot over Sachin Pilot
Devi Lal’s unique case
The Haryana strongman and Jat leader was the power behind two prime ministers between 1989 and 1991.
However, when he was being sworn-in, Devi Lal insisted on referring to himself as deputy prime minister (up-pradhan mantri). Then President R. Venkataraman corrected him twice but to no avail.
One K.M. Sharma approached the Supreme Court too, challenging his continuation in office, mainly on the ground that by taking oath as deputy PM, a non-existent post, Devi Lal had breached the Constitution and hence his continuation was illegal and untenable.
During hearings, the then attorney general told the bench that Devi Lal as deputy PM was only in descriptive terms and for all purposes, he was a minister. He also admitted that there was no constitutional sanction for the post of deputy PM.
The bench headed by Justice Ranganath Misra held that oath should be viewed in two parts — descriptive and substantial — and held that while the designation as deputy PM is only descriptive, the oath of office and secrecy which he (Devi Lal) undertook was substantive and consequently did not vitiate the oath.
Contentious issue of deputy CMs
Since Independence, several states have had deputy chief ministers, mostly in cases where the party high command was reluctant to give the top post to a claimant. In some cases, the post was used as a bargaining chip while conducting negotiations with alliance partners — existing or prospective.
There have been instances where a state had more than one deputy CM — the current Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma as deputy CMs while the last time the Congress held power in Madhya Pradesh — under Digvijaya Singh — it appointed two leaders, Subhash Yadav and Jamuna Devi, to the post.
In 2004, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, a former chief minister of Punjab, was appointed deputy CM in the government of Captain Amarinder Singh after she, along with a majority of MLAs, raised a banner of revolt against the current CM.
Also read: Ashok Gehlot is Congress pick for Rajasthan CM, Sachin Pilot to be his deputy
Is it an office of profit?
Legislators holding an office of profit, unless that office has been exempted under law, can even lose the membership of the House.
When Aam Aadmi Party MLA Manish Sisodia was appointed deputy CM in the Delhi government headed by Arvind Kejriwal, a petition was filed with the President of India by Vivek Garg, who sought Sisodia’s disqualification for holding an “office of profit”. Garg claimed that by holding a post that was non-existent, Sisodia had committed an illegality.
In a detailed legal opinion, Constitution expert and former Lok Sabha secretary general T.K. Viswanathan, who was legal adviser to former President Pranab Mukherjee, opined that there was nothing wrong in Sisodia holding the post.
Interestingly, Viswanathan also said, “…in a vibrant democracy like ours with (a) multiparty system of coalition governments, new forms of power-sharing equations are evolving which may not conform strictly to previous patterns of power-sharing prevalent under single-party dominated legislatures. This (is) part of the evolving political process in any democracy and appears to be normal.” This is why, he said, an MLA holding the post of deputy chief minister did not attract the provisions relating to office of profit.
Comment: Why no such article was published when Mr Keshav Maurya was appointed as deputy cheif minister for UP? Again paid agenda by BJP?
A Constitution complements with time and practice. The constitutional judge intervenes to this effect. Sometimes it’s the custom. Fortunately, because the Constitution is not a fixed text once and for all. There are precedents the Constitution of the United States, the “unwritten” Constitution of the United Kingdom!
It’s better than Ministers without portfolios we had Union Government and last time it was under Vajpayee who please allies like Mamta who insisted on a particular portfolio by not accepting Coal Ministry as her supporters called it Koila to Moila! so she remained Minister without portfolio which I called as Minister without responsibility!!!