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On March 22, 2026, Narendra Modi completed 8,931 days arsenic caput of an elected authorities successful India, combining implicit thirteen years arsenic Chief Minister of Gujarat (from October 7, 2001 to May 21, 2014) with 3 consecutive presumption arsenic Prime Minister. The milestone surpassed the grounds of Pawan Kumar Chamling, who served arsenic Chief Minister of Sikkim for 8,930 days. Neither the congratulations from wrong the ruling dispensation nor the alarm from its critics engages the law question the milestone makes unavoidable: wherefore does India’s Constitution enforce nary bounds connected however agelong a azygous idiosyncratic whitethorn clasp the bureau that wields existent enforcement power?
India is antithetic among ample democracies successful this respect. The United States adopted the Twenty-Second Amendment successful 1951, responding to Franklin Roosevelt’s 4 consecutive terms. South Korea, Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia each enforce statesmanlike word limits. Among parliamentary democracies, the question is considered little urgent due to the fact that the Prime Minister serves astatine the assurance of the legislature. But this theoretical availability of removal is precisely the presumption that requires scrutiny successful the Indian context.
Constituent Assembly’s rationale
The Constituent Assembly’s reasoning was articulated astir influentially by B.R. Ambedkar successful his code of November 4, 1948 introducing the Draft Constitution. Ambedkar drew a favoritism betwixt “the regular appraisal of responsibility,” disposable done questions, no-confidence motions, and adjournment motions, and the “periodic assessment” offered by fixed-term elections. The regular assessment, helium argued, was acold much effective. No word bounds was needed due to the fact that the legislature’s assurance served arsenic a rolling check. The logic reflected Westminster practice, wherever nary Prime curate has been constrained by a word limit, but the ruling party’s caucus tin region its ain leader, arsenic Conservative MPs removed Margaret Thatcher successful 1990.
What the Tenth Schedule broke
The Fifty-Second Amendment (1985) inserted the Tenth Schedule, providing for the disqualification of immoderate legislator who votes against the enactment whip. The Supreme Court successful Kihoto Hollohan vs. Zachillhu (1992) upheld its constitutionality arsenic a measurement to support the integrity of the electoral mandate. But the Tenth Schedule fundamentally altered the narration betwixt legislature and enforcement that Ambedkar had relied upon. Under the anti-defection regime, a ruling-party subordinate who votes against the authorities connected a assurance question faces disqualification. The no-confidence motion, the precise instrumentality meant to substitute for word limits, becomes a dormant missive whenever the ruling enactment has a moving majority.
Nor does the British information valve run successful India. Indian governmental parties person nary institutionalised mechanics for enactment challenges. The anti-defection instrumentality locks legislators into enactment loyalty; the lack of intra-party ideology locks the enactment into loyalty to its leader. The cheque that was meant to substitute for word limits has been doubly disabled.
The comparative evidence
Tom Ginsburg, James Melton, and Zachary Elkins, successful their survey of enforcement term-limit evasion, showed that leaders successful aggregate regions person sought to widen their tenure done law amendment, replacement, oregon judicial interpretation. Ginsburg and Aziz Huq further argued that antiauthoritarian diminution much often proceeds done incremental organization decay than done abrupt authoritarian rupture. India has not needed to abolish a word bounds due to the fact that it ne'er had one. The question is whether the lack of a ceremonial constraint, combined with the neutralisation of parliamentary accountability, produces the aforesaid structural risks that word limits elsewhere are designed to prevent.
The statesmanlike irony
India has developed a normal against a 3rd statesmanlike term, though the presidency is mostly ceremonial. No President has served much than 2 terms. The anticipation satisfies the three-part trial for law conventions laid down by Ivor Jennings successful The Law and the Constitution (1959): precedents exist, the actors believed themselves bound by a rule, and the regularisation has a reason. The bureau that holds nary existent enforcement powerfulness is constrained by convention. The bureau that holds virtually each enforcement powerfulness is constrained lone by the electorate’s periodic verdict, with the anti-defection instrumentality mostly disabling different accountability mechanisms.
The critic’s objection, and its limits
The strongest counter-argument is that voters person endorsed Mr. Modi’s tenure 3 consecutive times, and that a word bounds would override their expressed preference. The objection is serious; a word bounds is, successful a existent sense, anti-democratic. But it rests connected the premise that Ambedkar relied upon: that periodic elections, combined with parliamentary accountability, suffice to subject enforcement power. If that accountability has been structurally impaired by the Tenth Schedule, elections indispensable transportation a heavier burden. And elections, nevertheless free, are a anemic constraint connected the compounding advantages of prolonged incumbency: power implicit appointments to regulatory bodies, the Election Commission, and the higher judiciary; the capableness to signifier the accusation environment; and the quality to calibrate argumentation for electoral payment crossed aggregate cycles.
What mightiness beryllium done
The much earthy betterment is to reconstruct the mechanics the framers relied upon. Exempt votes connected assurance motions from the Tenth Schedule’s disqualification provision, truthful that legislators tin region a authorities without forfeiting their seats. A much ambitious anticipation is simply a law amendment limiting consecutive presumption arsenic Prime Minister oregon Chief Minister, portion permitting a instrumentality aft a gap. The State-level magnitude is arsenic pressing, fixed the extended tenures of leaders specified arsenic Jyoti Basu, Naveen Patnaik, and Pinarayi Vijayan.
The 8,931-day milestone forces attraction to whether India’s parliamentary strategy retains the self-correcting capableness the framers relied upon. The grounds suggests it does not. And the statesmanlike normal against indefinite tenure applies lone to the bureau that does not request it. That spread deserves scrutiny careless of who occupies the office.
(V. Venkatesan is simply a writer and ineligible researcher)
