New Delhi, August 19
President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam today began consultations with legal experts on the Union Cabinet’s decision to make a Presidential reference to the Supreme Court for its opinion on the Election Commission’s interpretation of Article 174 read with Article 324 of the Constitution in the context of Gujarat elections.
As part of this exercise, the President met former Attorneys-General K. Parasaran and Ashok Desai today for 45 minutes, sources disclosed.
The Cabinet’s formal note on the Presidential reference under Article 143 is not yet prepared. As this document has to be legally vetted, it would take a couple of days more.
Though the President is bound to accept the Union Cabinet’s advice and there is nothing much he can do about it, today’s development shows that the President has a mind of his own and he is not a rubber stamp Head of the State. His conferring with legal luminaries is yet another indicator of this after Dr Kalam’s two-day Gujarat visit last week, political observers said.
President Kalam also had two more distinguished visitors today — Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa. Both these visits were in the nature of “courtesy calls”.
Significantly, the entire seven-member team of the National Commission for Minorities also called on President Kalam today. It is understood that the President asked the NCM members to play a pro-active role in the discharge of their duties and pay frequent visits to the states in the overall interest of communal harmony.
