The Politics of President Office

The politicization of the office of the President of India probably began during the presidential election of 1969, when congress party had declared Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as its official candidate but then prime minister, Indira Gandhi openly defying the party. fielded her own candidate V.V.Giri for the post and asked her adherents to give a conscience-vote. Giri was elected as the president of the country. It was in fact, the victory for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and she became omnipotent. Consequently, congress party underwent split and Congress (I)/(R) came into existence. This was the beginning of the trend of installing personal / party loyalists to the highest constitutional position in order to get them act as per his/her sponsor’s suitability —– which what happened when President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declared a state of emergency upon the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s advice on the night of 25 June 1975. This blemish brought the president’s office the disrepute of ‘rubber stamp’. In last forty years the country’s politics has undergone further and further declension; consequently the president’s office too witnessed the degeneracy, touching its nadir when the proficiency or prepotency of the candidate is hardly talked, but ‘a muslim’/ ‘a dalit’/’a woman’ become the criterion.