Vice President, Jagdeep Dhankhar cautioned that ‘India’s rise at the global stage comes with challenges – within and without. He called for intelligentsia and the people to be cognizant of ‘incubators and distributors orchestrating pernicious narratives to downsize our growth trajectory and dent our functional democracy and constitutional institutions’.
He was addressing a gathering after releasing a book ‘Governorpet to Governor’s House: A Hick’s Odyssey’ – a memoir of the former Governor of Tamil Nadu, PS Ramamohan Rao in New Delhi. He observed that the ‘essence of democracy’ is that ‘all are similarly accountable to law. No one can have privileged consideration by law and be looked at through a different prism’.
Suggesting that India is the most vibrant democracy, he said ‘equality before law is something we cannot negotiate’. Noting that dynamics of governance would always be challenging, the Vice President said it required harmonised functioning of constitutional institutions – the legislative, the executive and the judiciary.
But, he said, ‘there is no room for confrontation, or being a complainant, by those who head the institutions. They have to act in collaboration and find resolution in togetherness and tandem.’ The Vice President suggested creating ‘a structured interactive mechanism amongst those at the helm of the institutions – the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executives’ in this regard.
Dhankhar reiterated that ‘it is the primacy of our constitution that determines the stability, harmony and productivity of democratic governance. Parliament, reflecting the mandate of the people, is the ultimate and exclusive architect of the Constitution’.
Former Vice President of India, Venkaiah Naidu, Governor of Haryana, Bandaru Dattatreya, former Governor of Tamil Nadu and the author, P.S. Ramamohan Rao, Members of Parliament, K. Keshav Rao, Y.S. Chowdary and other dignitaries were present.
