 "Sushma Swaraj")
When the prime minister (PM) and the home minister are abroad, who runs the country as acting PM?
Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj.
Prime minister Narendra Modi is in the final phase of his tour of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries and home minister Rajnath Singh was in China from last Wednesday to Monday. The cabinet secretariat website says Swaraj is number 3 in the order of precedence, after the prime minister and the home minister, followed by finance minister Arun Jaitley, number 4. Senior Cabinet ministers say they have got no official intimation of the arrangement, but according to the seating at Cabinet meetings, Swaraj is designated number three.
While this is a purely administrative matter, it could be an important insight into the PM's assessment of his colleagues. In the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, it was finance minister Pranab Mukherjee who acted as the PM when Manmohan Singh was abroad. After Mukherjee's exit from the council of ministers, defence minister A K Antony got the number two position. He was allocated the seat next to Manmohan Singh at cabinet meetings.
On November 15, after news of the Paris attacks, Swaraj, who was set to go to the US to preside over the Regional Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Los Angeles, returned midway from Dubai where she was on a transit halt. At that stage, Rajnath Singh was still in the capital. But, with the PM on an extended foreign tour and the home minister expected to depart for China two days later, Swaraj was asked to stay in Delhi.
Swaraj was in the midst of a storm during the last Parliament session for her connections with former Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi. This had caused an uproar in Parliament for several days.
An acting prime minister is expected to preside over Cabinet meetings. In Modi's absence, in September 2014, Rajnath Singh presided over just one cabinet meeting, when the President's Rule had to be imposed on Maharashtra after the Nationalist Congress Party withdrew support to the Congress and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had to resign. A meeting of the cabinet had to be called and its recommendation sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan. No cabinet meetings have been held while the PM has been away for his Asean meetings.
Sanjaya Baru, former media advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh, said: "A prime minister is a prime minister whether he is in India or abroad. If need be, he can be consulted even when he is flying. So, there is no reason to formally appoint a No 2. Only when a cabinet meeting is held in his absence, the PM instructs somebody to chair it."
However, the document on the cabinet secretariat website has the order of precedence from May 3, and has "28.08.2015" written by pen - suggesting this is the latest arrangement.
