When news came that John Kennedy had been shot,I was in my office in University of California at Berkeley. There was also the news that Lyndon Johnson had been shot as well. I tried to recall the order of succession. If the President and Vice President are dead,the next in line was the Speaker of the House John McCormack and then the President pro tem of the Senate Carl Hayden who was ninety.
As it happened,the rumour turned out to be false and Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President. Having a written Constitution,the US has a precise order of succession to the Presidency in case of a vacancy between elections. India has a written Constitution but Westminster-type politics. The most important executive position of the Prime Minister has no written rules for succession but there is an assumption that British rules will be followed whereby whoever is elected as the Leader of the majority party is called by the President to form the Government.
A very uncertain picture emerges as to what the rules are in India. To be fair,so far the succession issue has only confronted the Congress,which has had to deal with four major transitions. In the first two,Nehru in May 1964 and Shastri in January 1966,the Westminster procedure was followed to the letter. The senior Cabinet minister,Gulzarilal Nanda,was made interim Prime Minister and then the parliamentary Congress Party proceeded to elect a successor. In 1964 it was Shastri,thanks to the Syndicate of Kamaraj,SK Patil and Atulya Ghosh who twisted arms and asked Morarji Desai to relent. In 1966,when Shastri suddenly died of a heart attack in Tashkent,the Syndicate again moved in and Indira Gandhi was elected after a short interval Nanda was again interim PM.
It is this exemplary procedure which seems to have got Pranab Mukherjee in trouble. After Indira Gandhis assassination,gossip goes that Rajiv Gandhi and Pranab Mukherjee were flying back from Calcutta to Delhi. Apparently Rajiv asked Pranab what should happen now. Pranab seems to have given the correct reply that the senior Cabinet member should be made interim Prime Minister before the election of a new leader. This seems to have been misunderstood as Pranabs bid for power as he was the senior Cabinet minister then. If true,we must record this as the first instance of dynasty politics in India. Rajiv Gandhi perhaps presumed succession,which his mother never did on either of the two occasions when she could have done.
When Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991,Congress again did not follow the procedure of the first two successions. The leaders tried to implement dynasty rule but Sonia Gandhi refused the Crown. Then again the Party had to fall back on its own devices. The story goes that the Vice President Shankar Dayal Sharma was offered the Presidency of the Congress Party and hence the Prime Ministership. He declined pleading his age being against the hard work of a PM. It was then apparently that Narasimha Rao was chosen.
Two anomalies have to be noted. By now the presidency of the Congress is synonymous with leadership of the parliamentary party which was not the case when Nehru died. These positions were separate as is often the case in many parties. Secondly no formal election with rival candidates was held. The last innovation was made in 2004 by Sonia Gandhi in declining Prime Ministership while retaining the Party Leadership. Dr Manmohan Singh was chosen to be Prime Minister on her recommendation by the President.
Thus in India,the rules of succession are still in flux. The danger of informal rules is that they can be challenged as it happens at the State level frequently. Congress has decided that there has to be unanimity rather than a contested election. This may prove unhealthy in the long run. Indeed,Morarji Desais resentment at being deprived of his chance to contest may have been at the root of the 1969 break up of the Congress. The defection of NCP is another example. It may be time to get back to formal rules as and when the situation next arises. Congress cannot afford another break up.
