Vol. 13 · pages 541–545

With regard to the second amendment, namely, that the Ministers should not be appointed by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister, but should be chosen by proportional representation, I have not been able to understand exactly what is the underlying purpose he has in mind. So far I was able to follow his arguments, he said the method prescribed in the Draft Constitution was undemocratic. Well, I do not understand why it is undemocratic to permit a Prime Minister, who is chosen by the people, to appoint Ministers from a House which is also chosen on adult suffrage, or by people who are chosen on the basis of adult suffrage. I fail to understand why that system is undemocratic. But I suspect that the purpose underlying his amendment is to enable minorities to secure representation in the Cabinet. Now if that is so, I sympathise with the object he has in view, because I realise that a great deal of good administration, so to say, depends upon the fact as to in whose hands the administration vests. If it is controlled by a certain group, there is no doubt about it that the administration will function in the interests of the group represented by that particular body of people in control of administration. Therefore, there is nothing wrong in proposing that the method of choosing the Cabinet should be such that it should permit members of the minority communities to be included in the cabinet. I do not think that that aim is either unworthy or there is something in it to be ashamed of. But I would like to draw the attention of my friend, Mr. Mahboob Ali Baig, that his purpose would be achieved by an addition which the Drafting Committee proposes to make of a schedule which is called Schedule 3-A. It will be seen that we have in the Draft Constitution introduced one schedule called Schedule 4 which contains the Instrument of Instructions to the Governor as to how he has to exercise his discretionary powers in the matter of administration. We have analogous to that, decided to move an amendment in order to introduce another schedule which also contains a similar Instrument of Instructions to the President. One of the clauses in the proposed Instrument of Instruction will be this : “In making appointment to his Council of Ministers, the President shall use his best endeavours to select his Ministers in the following manner, that is to say, to appoint a person who has been found by him to be most likely to command a stable majority in Parliament as the Prime Minister, and then to appoint on the advice of the Prime Minister those persons, including so far as practicable, members of minority communities, who will best be in a position collelectively to command the confidence of Parliament.” 508 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES

I think this Instrument of Instructions will serve the purpose, if that is the purpose which Mr. Mahboob Ali Baig has in his mind in moving his amendment. I do not think it is possible to make any statutory provision for the inclusion of members of particular communities in the cabinet. That, I think, would not be possible, in view of the fact that our Constitution, as proposed, contains the principle of collective responsibility, and there is no use foisting upon the Prime Minister a colleague simply because he happens to be the member of a particular minority community, but who does not agree with the fundamentals of the policy which the Prime Minister and his party have committed themselves to. Coming to the amendment of my friend, Mr. Tahir, he wants to lay down that the President shall not be bound to accept the advice of the Ministers where he has discritionary functions to perform. It seems to me that Mr. Tahir has merely bodily copied Section 50 of the Government of India Act before it was adopted. Now, the provision contained in Section 50 of the Government of India Act as it originally stood was perfectly legitimate, because under that Act the Governor-General was by law and statute invested with certain discretionary functions, which are laid down in Sections 11, 12, 19 and several other parts of the Constitution. Here, so far as the Governor-General is concerned, he has no discretionary functions at all. Therefore, there is no case which can arise where the President would be called upon to discharge his functions without the advice of the Prime Minister or his cabinet. From that point of view the amendment is quite unnecessary. Mr. Tahir has failed to realise that all that the President will have under the new Constitution will be certain prerogatives but not functions and there is a vast deal of difference between prerogatives and functions as such. Under a parliamentary system of Government, there are only two prerogatives which the King or the Head of the State may exercise. One is the appointment of the Prime Minister and the other is the dissolution of Parliament. With regard to the Prime Minister it is not possible to avoid vesting the discretion in the President. The only other way by which we could provide for the appointment of the Prime Minister without vesting the authority or the discretion in the President, is to require that it is the House which shall in the first instance choose 509DRAFT CONSTITUTION

its leader, and then on the choice being made by a motion or a resolution, the President should proceed to appoint the Prime Minister. Mr. Mohd. Tahir : On a point of order, how will it explain the position of the Governors and the Ministers of the State where discretionary powers have been allowed to be used by the Governors ? The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : The position of the Governor is exactly the same as the position of the President, and I think I need not over-elaborate that at the present moment because we will consider the whole position when we deal with the State Legislatures and the Governors. Therefore, in regard to the Prime Minister, the other thing is to allow the House to select the leader, but it seems that that is quite unnecessary. Supposing the Prime Minister made the choice of a wrong person either because he had not what is required, namely, a stable majority in the House, or because he was a persona non-grata with the House : the remedy lies with the House itself, because the moment the Prime Minister is appointed by the President, it would be possible for the House or any Member of the House, or a party which is opposed to the appointment of that particular individual, to table a motion of noconfidence in him and get rid of him altogether if that is the wish of the House. Therefore, one way is as good as the other and it is therefore felt desirable to leave this matter in the discretion of the President. With regard to the dissolution of the House there again there is not any definite opinion so far as the British constitutional lawyers are concerned. There is a view held that the President, or the King, must accept the advice of the Prime Minister for a dissolution if he finds that the House has become recalcitrant or that the House does not represent the wishes of The people. There is also the other view that notwithstanding the advice of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, the President, if he thinks that the House has ceased to represent the wishes of the people, can suo moto and of his own accord dissolve the House. I think these are purely prerogatives and they do not come within the administration of the country and as such no such provision as Mr. Tahir has suggested in his amendment is necessary to govern the exercise of the prerogatives. Now, Sir, I come to the amendments of Prof. K. T. Shah. It is rather difficult for me to go through his long amendments and to extract what 510 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES

is really the summon bonum of each of these longish paragraphs. I have gone through them and I find that Prof. K. T. Shah wants to propose four things. One is that he does not want the Prime Minister, at any rate by statute. Secondly, he wants that every Minister on his appointment as Minister should come forward and seek a vote of confidence of the Legislature. His third proposition is that a person who is appointed as a Minister, if he does not happen to be an elected Member of the House at the time of his appointment, must seek election and be a Member within six months. His fourth proposition is that no person who has been convicted of bribery and corruption and so on and so forth shall be appointed as a Minister. Now, Sir, I shall take each of these propositions separately. First, with regard to the Prime Minister, I have not been able to understand why, for instance. Prof. K. T. Shah thinks that the Prime Minister ought to be eliminated. If I understood him correctly, he thought that he had no objection if by convention a Prime Minister was retained as part of the executive. Well, if that is so, if Prof. K. T. Shah has no objection for convention to create a Prime Minister, I should have thought there was hardly any objection to giving statutory recognition to the position of the Prime Minister. In England, too, as most students of constitutional law will remember, the Prime Minister was an office which was recognised only by convention. It is only in the latter stages when the Act to regulate the salaries of the Ministers of Cabinet was enacted. I believe in 1939 or so, that a statutory recognition was given to the position of the Prime Minister. Nonetheless, the Prime Minister existed. I want to tell my friend Prof. K. T. Shah that his amendment would be absolutely fatal to the other principle which we want to enact, namely collective responsibility. All Members of the House are very keen that the Cabinet should work on the basis of collective responsibility and all agree that that is a very sound principle. But I do not know how many Members of the House realise what exactly is the machinery by which collective responsibility is enforced. Obviously, there cannot be a statutory remedy. Supposing a Minister differed from other Members of the Cabinet and gave expression to his views which were opposed to the views of the Cabinet, it would be hardly possible for the law to come in and to prosecute him for having committed a breach 511DRAFT CONSTITUTION

of what might he called collective responsibility. Obviously, there cannot be a legal sanction for collective responsibility. The only sanction through which collective responsibility can be enforced is through the Prime Minister. In my judgment collective responsibility is enforced by the enforcement of two principles. One principle is that no person shall be nominated to the Cabinet except on the advice of the Prime Minister. Secondly, no person shall be retained as a member of the cabinet if the Prime Minister says that he shall be dismissed. It is only when Members of the Cabinet both in the matter of their appointment as well as in the matter of their dismissal are placed under the Prime Minister, that it would be possible to realise our ideal of collective responsibility. I do not see any other means or any other way of giving effect to that principle. Supposing you have no Prime Minister, what would really happen ? What would happen is this, that every Minister will be subject to the control or influence of the President. It would be perfectly possible for the President who is not ad idem with a particular Cabinet, to deal with each Minister separately, singly, influence them and thereby cause disruption in the Cabinet. Such a thing is not impossible to imagine. Before collective responsibility was introduced in the British Parliament you remember how the English King used to disrupt the British Cabinet. He had what was called a Party of King’s Friends both in the cabinet as well as in Parliament. That sort of thing was put a stop to by collective responsibility. As I said, collective responsibility can be achieved only through the instrumentality of the Prime Minister. Therefore, the Prime Minister is really the keystone of the arch of the Cabinet and unless and until we create that office and endow that office with statutory authority to nominate and dismiss Ministers there can be no collective responsibility. Now, Sir, with regard to the second proposition of my friend Prof. K. T. Shah that a Minister on appointment should seek a vote of confidence. I am sure that Prof. K. T. Shah will realise that there is no necessity for any such provision at all. It is true that in the early history of the British Cabinet every person who, notwithstanding the fact that he was a Member of Parliament, if he was appointed a Minister, was required to resign his seat in Parliament and to seek re-election because it was fell that a person if he is appointed a Minister will likely 512 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES