P ARLIAMENTARY E XECUTIVE IN I NDIA When the Constitution of India was written, India already had some experience of running the parliamentary system under the Acts of and . This experience had shown that in the parliamentary system, the executive can be effectively controlled by the representatives of the people. The makers of the Indian Constitution wanted to ensure that the government would be sensitive to public expectations and would be responsible and accountable. The other alternative to the parliamentary executive was the presidential form of government.
But the presidential executive puts much emphasis on the president as the chief executive and as source of all executive power. There is always the danger of personality cult in presidential executive. The makers of the Indian Constitution wanted a government that would have a strong executive branch, but at the same time, enough safeguards should be there to check against the personality cult. In the parliamentary form there are many mechanisms that ensure that the executive will be answerable to and controlled by the legislature or people’s representatives.
So the Constitution adopted the parliamentary system of executive for the governments both at the national and State levels. According to this system, there is a President who is the formal Head of the state of India and the Prime Minister Check your progress Neha: It is really very simple. A country having a president has a presidential executive and one with a prime minister has parliamentary executive. How would you explain to Neha that this is not always the case?
Haven’t we had very strong Prime Ministers? Does it mean that even the parliamentary system is not fool proof against personality cult? That means people and the legislatures have to be constantly vigilant!