Critically examine and comment: “The principle of collective responsibility, a la the Cabinet system of government, has eroded in the context of the emergence of coalition governments in India.” (2010)
Article 75(3) makes the Council of Ministers collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha. In Common Cause v. Union of India (1999), the Supreme Court gave the principle two meanings: ministers publicly support policies they may have opposed in Cabinet, and each bears personal and moral responsibility for them. The statement comes from the coalition decades after 1989. It is largely true of the conventional limb, public unanimity, but the erosion is neither total nor new.
The case for erosion
The Westminster convention assumes that ministers owe their office to the Prime Minister. Coalition breaks that link: an allied minister’s career is controlled by a party chief who is often outside the government.
- Public dissent without resignation. In 2012 the Trinamool Congress forced out its own Railway Minister, Dinesh Trivedi, over the fare rise in his Railway Budget, and then pulled its ministers out over retail FDI. In 2024 Chirag Paswan, a Union minister, publicly opposed the lateral-entry scheme, which was withdrawn.
- No power to dismiss. A Prime Minister cannot sack an ally’s minister without risking the government. Manmohan Singh said over the 2G spectrum affair in 2011 that “some compromises have to be made in managing a coalition”.
- Decisions outside the Cabinet. Coordination committees, the Common Minimum Programme and the National Advisory Council settled matters before the Cabinet saw them, so collective responsibility attached to decisions ministers had not collectively made.
- Ministries as fiefdoms. Portfolios allocated by party became partners’ domains, beyond collective scrutiny.
Why the claim needs qualification
- The legal limb works. Governments still fell as a body on losing the House: V. P. Singh in 1990, H. D. Deve Gowda in 1997 and Atal Bihari Vajpayee by one vote in 1999. Coalition made confidence a live sanction; under large majorities it had been a formality.
- The erosion predates coalitions. Under Indira Gandhi the Cabinet was already marginal. The Emergency was proclaimed in 1975 without prior Cabinet deliberation, which is why the 44th Amendment requires written Cabinet advice under Article 352.
- Majority governments erode it differently. After 2014, unanimity returned, but through a dominant Prime Minister’s Office, the whip and the Tenth Schedule. Compliance replaced collective deliberation. Dominance weakens the Cabinet by concentration; coalition weakens it by dispersal.
- New forms of collectivity. A written CMP and a coordination committee make responsibility collective across parties, in the way Arend Lijphart‘s consensus model expects. The National Agenda for Governance bound the NDA partners to shelve contested issues, and they kept to it for five years.
Assessment
The statement holds for the unanimity limb: public dissent by allied ministers is now routine and carries no penalty. It fails for the confidence limb, which coalition revived. Since 2024, allied ministers in a BJP-led coalition again speak in two voices, though the BJP holds the key portfolios.
Conclusion
Collective responsibility in India has not collapsed. It has narrowed into accountability to the House rather than a code of ministerial conduct. Coalitions exposed and hastened that narrowing, but its roots lie in party centralisation. Restoring it needs coalition conventions, such as written programmes and consultation before decisions, rather than a nostalgic Westminster ideal.