Beyond the party

It was a cartoon that famously summed up the President of India’s powers — or their lack — with brutal incisiveness. Abu Abraham, one of India’s most brilliant cartoonists who was renowned for surgically eviscerating his subjects, showed the fifth President, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, in a bathtub meekly signing the ordinance declaring the Emergency in 1975. The speech balloon has Ahmed helpfully saying: “If there are any more ordinances, just ask them to wait.”

Ram Nath Kovind, who will be the 14th and India’s second Dalit President, has toiled for his party away from the glare of the news spotlight and TV cameras. Late in his career, he’s been elevated to an office to which he almost certainly never aspired. Nevertheless, from this moment, the eyes of the nation will be upon him and it must be hoped that he will not be found wanting and that if called upon, he will act in the larger interests of the country as custodian of the Constitution, irrespective of his links to the RSS. The former governor of Bihar, like all the Presidents before him, will find himself in a role that’s largely ceremonial but which also carries substantive powers. Importantly, Kovind will be President in 2019 when the next general elections are held. Most political pundits predict that the BJP will return to office with ease. But the BJP, without its allies, has only 283 seats. That is a wafer-thin majority and it only needs to lose 12 seats to be short of the magic figure. It is at such grey moments that the powers of the President come into play and that might be when Kovind is tested: Will he act as a foot-soldier of the BJP or as the impartial holder of high office, fearing none and favouring none?

All civil servants and the armed forces serve at the pleasure of the President. What exactly that means has been the subject of considerable discussion and legal challenges. Most governments have insisted that the President must act on the advice of the government of the day. But there are legally fuzzy areas in this formulation. President Pratibha Patil, for instance, refused to sign off on the death penalty. She commuted 34 sentences. While not all mercy petitions involved the death penalty, it was the most commutations since India’s first two Presidents. President Pranab Mukherjee, by contrast, has not hesitated to reject mercy petitions. More happily, he has also left his mark by renovating Rashtrapati Bhavan to its former splendour and reviving its history. But the contrast between Mukherjee and the next incumbent could not be starker. Mukherjee was a veteran politician who had held high office for three decades and the presidency was only a short step up for him. The same cannot be said of Kovind, who is relatively unknown. The nation can only hope that during his time he will add to the stature of the office.

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