Parliament not amenable to any intervention from executive, judiciary: VP Dhankhar

Addressing a Constitution Day event, he said, 'Sovereignty of Parliament is synonymous with sovereignty of the nation and it is impregnable.'

New Delhi: Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Sunday said the supremacy of Parliament as the sole architect of the Constitution is unquestionable and is not amenable to any intervention from the executive or the judiciary.

He also suggested creating a mechanism to have a structured interaction between those at the helm of affairs of these institutions so that issues do not spill out into the open and added he was working in his own capacity to generate such a system.

He said that for the country's continual growth, the executive, judiciary and the legislature "must generate collaborative discourse and not confrontational perception."

The Supreme Court cannot script a law for Parliament and the legislature cannot write a judgment for the apex court, he said.

Addressing a Constitution Day event here, he said, "Sovereignty of Parliament is synonymous with sovereignty of the nation and it is impregnable."

"Any incursion into the exclusive domain of Parliament will be a constitutional aberration and antithetical to democratic essence and values," he said.

Dhankhar said there is a well-defined constitutional domain for the executive, judiciary and the legislature. It is a constitutional mandate that all these organs of the State function in their respective domains.

Arrogating of the authority of one organ by another was beyond the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution, he said.

The vice president was of the view that governance is dynamic, given the emergence of challenges and technological onslaughts.

"There are bound to be differences, there are bound to be issues. Issues have to be ironed out. In a country like ours which has to show path to the entire world, there must be convergence of attitude amongst these three institutions in particular," he said.

If there are differences, these must be resolved through sublime statesmanship, he said.

"Public posturing or generating perception as a strategy to deal with such differences is best avoided," he said.

The vice president said he was happy that people in command of these institutions are statesmen and farsighted.

"...be it the prime minister of the country, the president of the nation or the chief justice of India, we couldn't be more fortunate than having these illustrious people heading the institutions," he said, adding any abberation coming in the public domain by observation or otherwise will not be soothing to our ears and to the people at large.

He said he was working in his own way to generate a system for a structured interaction between the three organs of the State because none of the people in the institutions can be complainants and they have to bring about resolution of the complainants of the people at large.

"The time has come that we must have a mechanism of a structured interaction amongst those at the helm of affairs of such institutions so that issues do not come in the public domain," he said.

In the past, Dhankhar had questioned the decision of the Supreme Court to strike down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act and lamented that there was not even a whisper in Parliament which had passed the law with near unanimity.

Ahead of the Winter session of Parliament, he said MPs and MLAs need to weaponise debate, dialogue, discussions and deliberation and not disturbance and disruptions as strategy.

In his address, the vice president described the Emergency, imposed in 1975, as the "darkest period" in the history of independent India.

Over the years, the Constitution has been a beacon of hope and freedom, except during the Emergency imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, he said.

"It was a sacrilege of the Constitution," he said, adding that such a misadventure cannot be thought of in the present times.

The vice president noted that Article 370 was the only article not drafted by the Drafting Committee and B R Ambedkar declined to draft it.

"This temporary article bled us. It made the lives of the people of Jammu and Kashmir hellish," he said, adding that the abrogation of its provisions was a tribute to Ambedkar as he did not want it.

Article 370 of the Constitution, which accorded special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was abrogated by the Centre in 2019.

Without taking names, Dhankhar also took a swipe at the critics of the government, saying every time something great happens in the country, some people engage in acts of tainting, tarnishing and demeaning its institutions.

He said such people, though very less in number, find it difficult to digest good things happening in the country.

Since 2015, November 26 is observed as Constitution Day to mark the adoption of the Constitution of India by the Constituent Assembly in 1949. Earlier, the day was observed as Law Day.