Executive

Every government has three organs. The legislature makes the laws, the executive carries them out and the judiciary settles disputes about them. The executive is the branch that runs the country from day to day, so people deal with it more than with any other organ.

The executive is much larger than the prime minister and the ministers. It also includes the huge body of officials who put decisions into practice. The political leaders who take the major decisions are called the political executive. The trained officials who serve under them are called the permanent executive. They stay in office whichever party wins the election.

The word executive means the body that looks after the carrying out of rules and policies. In any large organisation some people decide the rules and others put those rules into action. A company has a board that sets policy and managers who run the daily work. Government works in the same way. One set of office holders frames the policy and another set carries it out, and the organ that carries it out is the executive.

Countries organise their executive in different ways. The two main forms are the presidential system and the parliamentary system.

In a presidential system the president is both the head of state and the head of government. The president holds real power and does not depend on the support of the legislature. The United States and Brazil follow this form.

In a parliamentary system the head of state and the head of government are different persons. A president or a monarch is the head of state and holds a mainly ceremonial position. The prime minister is the head of government and holds the real power. The prime minister stays in office only while the legislature gives support.

A third form is the semi-presidential system. Here a president and a prime minister share power. The president keeps significant day-to-day authority. France and Russia follow this form. India chose the parliamentary system for both the Union and the States. It keeps the executive answerable to the elected legislature.

The Constitution places the executive power of the Union formally in the President. In practice the President exercises that power on the advice of the Council of Ministers. The President is the head of state and stands for the whole nation, while the real work of government is done by the prime minister and the ministers.

The President is not elected directly by the people. The President is elected by the elected members of Parliament and the elected members of the State legislative assemblies through a system of proportional representation. The term of office is five years. The President can be removed only by Parliament through the process of impeachment. The sole ground for impeachment is violation of the Constitution.

Article 74 says that there shall be a Council of Ministers headed by the prime minister to aid and advise the President. It also says that the President shall act on that advice. The article uses the word shall. In law, that word makes the advice binding on the President. Two amendments shaped this rule. The 42nd Amendment of 1976 made the advice expressly and fully binding. The 44th Amendment of 1978 then added the single safeguard: the President may ask the Council to reconsider its advice once, but must accept the advice that comes back.

The President is not only a rubber stamp. The President has a right to be informed about all important matters and can warn or advise the Council of Ministers. There are also a few situations where the President acts on his own judgement. The President can send back the advice of the Council once for reconsideration. The President can withhold assent to a bill that is not a money bill and send it back to Parliament. The Constitution sets no time limit for this, so the President can hold a bill back for a long time. This informal power is called the pocket veto. The President also uses real judgement when no party wins a clear majority and must decide whom to appoint as prime minister.

The formal position also clears up a common confusion. Executive power vests in the President under Article 53, not in the prime minister. In the same spirit, the Civil Services Board, the body that deals with the postings of senior civil servants, is chaired by the Cabinet Secretary and not by the prime minister. The article-by-article detail of the office, from election to impeachment to the veto, is set out in the exam essentials section below.

The prime minister is the most important person in the government of India. The President appoints as prime minister the leader who has the support of the majority in the Lok Sabha. The prime minister then chooses the other ministers and decides their ranks and departments. All ministers must be members of Parliament. A person made a minister without being a member must get elected within six months.

The Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha. Article 75(3) states this principle. It means that the whole council stands or falls together. The text stops there. The duty of a ministry to resign once it loses its majority in the Lok Sabha is a convention that flows from collective responsibility, not an explicit constitutional provision. In practice the convention is absolute. If the Lok Sabha passes a vote of no confidence, the entire Council of Ministers resigns. This applies even when the vote was aimed at a single minister. A minister who cannot accept a cabinet decision must either go along with it or leave the council.

The prime minister links the Council of Ministers with the President and with Parliament. Under Article 78 it is the prime minister's duty to keep the President informed of the decisions of the council. The Council of Ministers cannot exist without the prime minister. It comes into being only after the prime minister takes the oath of office. The death or resignation of the prime minister dissolves the whole council. The loss of a single minister creates only one vacancy. The 91st Amendment of 2003 limits the size of the council to fifteen per cent of the strength of the Lok Sabha. This keeps the council from growing too large.

The power of the prime minister rises and falls with politics. When a single party wins a clear majority, the prime minister is very strong. When the government rests on a coalition of several parties, the prime minister must consult the partners. The prime minister acts more as a negotiator than as a sole leader.

• Jawaharlal Nehru: the first prime minister, was in his fourth term when he died in office in 1964. He represented the Phulpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh, not Rae Bareilly.
• Morarji Desai: became the first non-Congress prime minister in 1977, when the Janata Party came to power after the Emergency.
• Union Finance Ministers: V.P. Singh, R. Venkataraman, Y.B. Chavan and Pranab Mukherjee all held the Finance portfolio at the Union level.
• A double vacancy at the top: if the offices of President and Vice-President fall vacant at the same time, the Chief Justice of India discharges the President's functions under the President (Discharge of Functions) Act, 1969. The Speaker of the Lok Sabha has no role in this succession.

The ministers decide policy, but they do not run the offices themselves. That work is done by a large body of trained officials called the bureaucracy or the civil service. These officials are permanent employees who stay on whichever party comes to power. They help the ministers frame policy and then carry it out.

The bureaucracy in India is expected to be skilled and politically neutral. Neutral means that the officials serve the government of the day without taking sides between parties. When a new government wins an election and changes the policy, the same officials must carry out the new policy faithfully. The Union Public Service Commission selects civil servants on merit through open examinations. Similar commissions do the same work in the States. The Constitution also reserves posts for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and other weaker sections. This ensures that the services represent every part of society.

The senior officers selected for the Indian Administrative Service and the Indian Police Service form the backbone of administration in the States. They work under the State government but are appointed by the central government. Only the central government can take disciplinary action against them. At the top of each State's administration sits the Chief Secretary, the senior-most civil servant of the State. The Chief Secretary is chosen by the Chief Minister and the state government, not appointed by the Governor. The post carries no fixed tenure. The bureaucracy is the machine through which welfare policy reaches the people. Democratic control over it therefore matters. Too little control lets officials ignore ordinary citizens. Too much political interference turns them into tools of the politicians.

Articles:

• Articles 308–323 (Part XIV): the public services and the Public Service Commissions.
• Articles 315–320: the Union and State Public Service Commissions, which select civil servants on merit.
• Article 311: safeguards for civil servants against arbitrary dismissal, removal or reduction in rank.

• Article 52 establishes the office. Article 53 vests the Union's executive power in the President.
• Election (Articles 54–55): an electoral college of the elected MPs and elected MLAs (plus Delhi and Puducherry), by proportional representation with a single transferable vote, by secret ballot. An MLA's vote is weighted by the state's population. The winning quota is 50% + 1.
• Eligibility (Art 58): citizen, 35 or above, qualified for the Lok Sabha, holding no office of profit.
• Term (Art 56): five years, re-election allowed (only Rajendra Prasad served two terms).
• Oath (Art 60): administered by the Chief Justice of India.
• Impeachment (Art 61): the only way to remove the President, on the ground of violation of the Constitution. A charge is moved by either House (14 days' notice, signed by one-fourth of members) and must be passed by a two-thirds majority of each House. Nominated members take part. State legislatures do not. No President has ever been impeached.

Powers span several domains:

• Executive: the general executive power of the Union.
• Legislative: summons, prorogues and dissolves the Houses, assents to bills, issues ordinances under Art 123. An ordinance has the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament. It can therefore amend or repeal any Central Act and can be given retrospective effect. But it can do nothing an Act cannot do, so it cannot abridge the Fundamental Rights.
• Financial: Money Bills need the President's recommendation. He constitutes the Finance Commission.
• Judicial: pardoning power, Art 72 (pardon, commutation, remission, respite, reprieve). The power is exercised only on the advice of the Council of Ministers, yet the Supreme Court has held it open to limited judicial review, for arbitrariness or bad faith.
• Diplomatic: represents India in foreign relations.
• Military: Supreme Commander of the armed forces.
• Emergency: Articles 352 (National Emergency), 356 (President's Rule in a State), 360 (Financial Emergency).
• Veto: absolute, suspensive and pocket veto.
• Article 74 binds the President to the Council's advice (he may return it once). Article 143 lets him seek the Supreme Court's advisory opinion.

A few companion provisions are tested as often as the powers themselves:

• Membership bar (Art 59(1)): the President cannot be a member of either House of Parliament or of any State legislature. Yet Article 79 defines Parliament as the President together with the two Houses, so the President is part of Parliament without sitting in it.
• Election disputes and timing: acts done by a President before the election is declared void remain valid (Article 71(2)). Under Article 62 the election to fill an expiring term must be completed before the term ends. It cannot be postponed on the ground that some Legislative Assemblies stand dissolved.
• Reports laid before Parliament: the President causes the Finance Commission's recommendations (Article 281), the CAG's report (Article 151) and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes' report (Article 338) to be laid before Parliament. The Public Accounts Committee's report is not in this list. It is a report of a parliamentary committee and is presented to Parliament by Parliament itself.
• Oath contents (matching pairs): the President swears (Article 60) to bear faith and allegiance to the Constitution and to preserve, protect and defend it. Supreme Court judges swear to uphold the Constitution and the laws. MPs swear the faithful discharge of their duties. Union ministers alone take an additional oath of secrecy.

• Value of an MLA's vote: the State's population divided by (the number of elected MLAs multiplied by 1000). The population figure is frozen at the 1971 Census. Because the divisor grows with the Assembly's size, a larger Assembly lowers the value of each MLA's vote for the same population.
• Value of an MP's vote: the total value of all the MLAs' votes divided by the total number of elected MPs. It is identical for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members.
• Size of the college: all the elected MPs and elected MLAs together number fewer than 5000.
• Comparisons follow population per seat, not a State's size: Uttar Pradesh's MLA carries the highest value (208) and Sikkim's the lowest (7). Kerala's MLA (152) outweighs Madhya Pradesh's (131), and Puducherry's MLA (16) outweighs Arunachal Pradesh's (8), because what matters is the frozen 1971 population spread over the Assembly's seats.

• Article 63: the second-highest constitutional office and the ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
• Elected (Art 66) by an electoral college of both Houses (including nominated members), by proportional representation. Qualifications: citizen, 35+, qualified for the Rajya Sabha. Acts as President during a vacancy for a maximum of six months.
• Removal (Art 67(b)): there is no impeachment and no stated ground. A removal resolution can be moved only in the Rajya Sabha, after 14 days' notice, and must then be agreed to by the Lok Sabha.
• Who held the office: Mohammad Hidayatullah and Shankar Dayal Sharma both served as Vice-President. Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and Neelam Sanjiva Reddy became President without ever holding the Vice-Presidency.

The Governor is the constitutional head of a State, the state-level counterpart of the President. The same office holder can be appointed Governor for two or more States (an arrangement allowed since 1956).

• Establishment and appointment: there is a Governor for each State (Article 153). The Governor is appointed by the President and holds office during the pleasure of the President (Articles 155–156). There is no fixed security of tenure. The President can remove a Governor at any time. The normal term is five years (Article 156), but a Governor continues in office beyond five years until a successor enters upon the office. This hold-over rule means the five-year term is neither fixed nor a hard ceiling.
• Concurrent charge: the Governor of Punjab is concurrently the Administrator of Chandigarh. Lakshadweep, by contrast, has its own Administrator; the Governor of Kerala holds no charge over it.
• Eligibility (Article 157): a citizen of India who has completed 35 years of age, holding no other office of profit and not a sitting member of any legislature (if a legislator is appointed, the seat is vacated on appointment, Article 158).
• Recommendation on who should be Governor: the Sarkaria Commission (on Centre–State relations) recommended that the Governor be an eminent person from outside the State, a detached figure with no intense recent political links and not active in politics in the recent past. This benchmark is frequently tested against the First ARC, Rajamannar Committee and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution.
• Discretionary powers (Article 163): unlike the President under Article 74 (whose advice is fully binding after the 42nd Amendment), the Governor may act in his own discretion where the Constitution so requires. Whether a matter falls in his discretion is decided by the Governor himself. That decision is final (Article 163(2)). Discretion is exercised in choosing a Chief Minister in a hung Assembly, recommending President's Rule (Article 356) and reserving a Bill for the President's consideration (Article 200).
• Pardoning power (Article 161): the Governor can pardon, reprieve, respite, remit, suspend or commute punishment for offences against State law. Unlike the President, the Governor cannot pardon a death sentence and has no power over court-martial sentences.
• No emergency powers: the Governor cannot proclaim an emergency, but reports to the President when the State's government cannot be carried on as per the Constitution (Article 356).
• Immunity (Article 361): under Article 361(1) the Governor, like the President, is not answerable to any court for the exercise and performance of the powers and duties of the office. In addition, no criminal proceedings can be instituted or continued against the Governor in any court during the term of office. Civil proceedings on personal acts need two months' written notice. The Governor's emoluments and allowances cannot be diminished during the term. The immunity does not bar suits against the State Government itself. A parallel shield protects State legislators: under Article 194 no member of a State legislature can be questioned in any court for anything said or any vote given in the House.

• Articles 74–75. Three tiers: Cabinet Ministers, Ministers of State and Deputy Ministers. The Cabinet is the small inner body (the word "Cabinet" entered the text via the 44th Amendment). The Council is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha (Art 75(3)). Ministers are individually responsible to the President.
• Attorney General (Art 76): the government's chief law officer, appointed by the President and qualified to be a Supreme Court judge. The Attorney General has a right of audience in all courts. He may speak (but not vote) in Parliament. The Solicitor General assists him.

The Constitution also settles how the government's business is organised. Article 77 governs the conduct of the Union's business. All executive actions of the Government of India are expressed to be taken in the name of the President, not the prime minister. Under Article 77(3) the President makes rules for the more convenient transaction of the business of the government and for the allocation of that business among ministers. Two sets of rules flow from this: the Allocation of Business Rules, which create the ministries and departments and distribute subjects among them, and the Transaction of Business Rules, which lay down how decisions are taken. Ministries and departments are therefore created by the President on the advice of the prime minister, not by the prime minister on the advice of the Cabinet Secretary. Each ministry is then assigned to a minister by the President, again on the prime minister's advice. The structure keeps growing: India had 18 ministries on 15 August 1947, and the number today is well above fifty.

The Cabinet Secretariat is the staff agency that serves the Cabinet as a whole. It works under the direct charge of the prime minister, and its administrative head is the Cabinet Secretary, the senior-most civil servant in India. Its core functions are the preparation of the agenda for Cabinet meetings, keeping the record of Cabinet decisions, providing secretariat assistance to the Cabinet Committees and ensuring that the Rules of Business are followed across ministries. It also smooths coordination when ministries disagree. It does not allocate financial resources to the ministries: that is the work of the Ministry of Finance through the budget. In the official Order of Precedence, the Warrant that ranks dignitaries for ceremonial purposes, the Chief Justice of India ranks above Union Cabinet Ministers, who rank above the Chief Election Commissioner, who ranks above the Cabinet Secretary.

The machinery for administrative reform has its own history. The Paul Appleby report of the 1950s, a study of Indian administration by an American expert, suggested that a minister and a secretary be designated solely for pursuing administrative reform. This suggestion is often wrongly credited to the Gopalaswamy Iyengar Committee, an earlier body that examined the reorganisation of the machinery of government. Acting on the recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission of 1966, the first ARC, the Department of Personnel was constituted in 1970 and placed under the prime minister's charge.

Exams repeatedly test which ministry houses a given department, board or programme. The frequently asked mappings are:

• Department of Atomic Energy: kept directly under the Prime Minister's Office for strategic reasons. Its units include the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Research and Exploration, the Heavy Water Board, Indian Rare Earths Limited and the Uranium Corporation of India, covering the whole nuclear fuel cycle.
• Department of Border Management: a department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, responsible for developing and managing India's borders.
• Department of Official Language: under the Ministry of Home Affairs, not Human Resource Development.
• Ministry of Tribal Affairs: the nodal ministry for implementing the Forest Rights Act, 2006, the law that recognises the land rights of Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.
• Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC): the body whose permission is needed to cultivate genetically modified crops such as Bt-Cotton, works under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.
• Ministry of Rural Development: runs the major area programmes: the Drought-Prone Area Programme, the Desert Development Programme and the National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas. None of these sits under Agriculture or Environment.
• Department of Drinking Water Supply: placed under the Ministry of Rural Development, not Water Resources (it later moved to the Ministry of Jal Shakti).
• Women and Child Development: began as a department under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, not Health and Family Welfare, and became a full ministry in 2006. The Food and Nutrition Board is the piece that worked under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare before moving to Women and Child Development.
• MCA-21: an e-governance project of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs that put company filings online.
• Transchart: the chartering wing of the Ministry of Surface Transport (now Ports, Shipping and Waterways), which charters ships for government cargo.