Former President Pranab Mukherjee with former union minister Suresh Prabhu at an event in New Delhi on Monday
Former President Pranab Mukherjee has sounded a warning shot for the Centre over the ongoing citizenship law protests, saying that Indian voters like their governments to be considerate towards people with different views. The significant remarks by the former Congress leader came during the second edition of Atal Bihari Memorial Lecture organised by the India Foundation in New Delhi on Monday.
“Indian electorate has time and again conveyed to ruling party that goes on to form government that we will take you to form government with the majority but also take in consideration the views of all those people who may not have voted for them,” the former union minister was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
He went on to say that every time a government had behaved “on the contrary,” the voters had punished the incumbent in the elections that followed.
“We think we can do anything and everything, when we have an overwhelming majority in legislature but that should not be the case,” the former academic reportedly said.
Mukherjee said during his address that a majority in Parliament only gave the party a right to form a stable government and not a majoritarian one, according to media reports.
“The lack of popular majority forbids you from (becoming) a majoritarian government. That is the message and essence of our parliamentary democracy," he was quoted as saying.
He noted that not a single government in the country had been elected with a 50 per cent majority since 1952.
Mukherjee also mulled increasing the number of seats in parliament to 1,000 to give better representation to all sections of the society.
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