Letters: Constitutional role

BJP has more RS MPs than Congress and when NDA and its friends are no longer heavily outnumbered

The president and vice-president have constitutional obligations. While addressing a meeting of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) MPs just ahead of the election for the office of vice-president of India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said it is significant that the country would have the president and the vice-president from the same ideology as that of the alliance during 2017-22. It seems Modi has forgotten the important feature of our democratic set-up — that when the president and vice-president are elected, they do not have any ideology.
 
They are the president and vice-president of the nation and they are to safeguards its interests in accordance with the Constitution of India. The vice-presidential office is constitutional, but the most substantive part of the incumbent's job is his role as chairman of the Rajya Sabha. It is in this context that a vice-president gets tested and judged irrespective of his ideology. It is for the chairman to protect the requisite neutrality and fair-mindedness over and above of his ideology. Now that the Bharatiya Janata Party has more Rajya Sabha MPs (though not in majority) than Congress and when the NDA and its friends are no longer heavily outnumbered by the combined opposition, his role becomes a testing one. We hope the president and the vice-president will stand by the value of multi-party democracy and will be the custodians of the Indian Constitution. S K Khosla   Chandigarh 

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