| If a new prime minister does not come along to assume leadership of
the 11th Lok Sabha, I K Gujral is destined to lead a caretaker Government till the new one
is formed after a general election. Legally, the period cannot exceed six months because
that is the maximum interval, under Article 85 of the Constitution, between the last
sitting of one session of Parliament and the first sitting of the next session. With a
mid-term poll likely to take place in the third week of February 1998, the lifespan of the
caretaker Government can be a good six to seven weeks. It should, therefore, be shorter
than the "baby sitting" spell of the Chandra Shekhar government in 1991 --
nearly four months. During the caretaker period, says an official in the Election
Commission (EC), the Government must not transgress the "thin line" that
separates routine matters from policy decisions. This line has been drawn by convention,
not any law. The convention has been established by the conduct of governments prior to a
series of mid-term polls between 1971 and 1991.
According to the EC source, the routine matters include sanctioning budgeted
expenditure and ordering executive transfers. However, appointments to constitutional
posts are regarded as policy matters and should await the next government. There will be
no fresh appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and high courts, no ordinances, no
creation of new posts, no ambassadorial appointments: in short, no work but the bare
minimum.
Since diplomacy is supposed to be Gujral's special area of interest, the lack of any
action here will particularly upset him. A caretaker regime essentially means no new
policy initiatives synchronised with the proposed visits of Russian President Boris
Yeltsin and his US counterpart Bill Clinton early next year.
-- Sumit Mitra |
