India's Prime Minister Is Appointed by the President Under Article 75(1), and the Whole Council of Ministers Answers Together to the 543-Seat Lok Sabha

Article 75(1) of the Constitution says, “The Prime Minister shall be appointed by the President”, and then gives no rule for whom to pick. In practice the President appoints the person who can show the support of a majority in the Lok Sabha, the House of the People, which is elected from 543 constituencies. Because 272 is the smallest whole number above half of 543, that figure is the usual mark for a majority. The Prime Minister then advises the President on every other minister, and the whole council answers together to the Lok Sabha.

The Government of India’s pocket edition of the Constitution shows how little the text says. Only Article 75(1) deals with how the Prime Minister is chosen, and the word “Cabinet” appears just once in the whole document, in Article 352(3) on national emergencies. Practice, parliamentary rules and the Cabinet Secretariat’s rulebooks supply the rest. Article 394 brought the Constitution into force on 26 January 1950.

Why the Constitution does not name the majority leader

The Constituent Assembly (see the Constituent Assembly at work) considered writing the rule down. On 30 December 1948 K. Santhanam told the House that the articles on the Prime Minister and the council “embody conventions” of the British cabinet system and should not be read literally. He argued that fixing the position in law could bring “a degree of rigidity” that did not fit “the elasticity of the cabinet system of government”.

Ambedkar dealt with the office itself. Professor K. T. Shah had wanted no statutory Prime Minister, and Ambedkar replied that the post should have statutory recognition, because collective responsibility has no other enforcer. “The Prime Minister is really the keystone of the arch of the Cabinet,” he said, and without a Prime Minister each minister could be influenced by the President separately.

The question came back on 14 October 1949. T. T. Krishnamachari moved to drop a clause that would have told the President to be “generally guided” by a schedule of instructions in choosing ministers, because that schedule would not be moved. H. V. Kamath asked whether a President who ignored his ministers’ advice would be violating the Constitution and be liable to impeachment. “There is not the slightest doubt about it,” Ambedkar said. Shibban Lal Saxena then regretted that nothing said “the President shall be bound to call the leader of the majority party to form the Cabinet”. The clause does not appear in the Constitution as adopted.

From the election result to the oath

The President’s communique of 7 June 2024 records the most recent appointment. A delegation of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by the BJP’s president, called on her at 2.30 pm that day and handed over a letter saying that a member had been elected leader of the BJP Parliamentary Party. Letters of support from the alliance’s other parties came with it.

The communique gives the President’s reasoning. Having satisfied herself from the letters that the BJP-led NDA, “which is also the largest pre-election alliance”, was in a position to command majority support in the newly constituted 18th Lok Sabha and form a stable government, she appointed the leader as Prime Minister, “exercising powers vested in her” under Article 75(1). She asked him to indicate the date and time of the swearing-in and to advise her on the names of the other ministers.

That last step is the second half of Article 75(1), and a Rashtrapati Bhavan release of 26 May 2014 shows it in practice. It says the President “has appointed” the Prime Minister and, “as advised by the Prime Minister”, the rest of the Council of Ministers: 23 Cabinet Ministers, 10 Ministers of State (Independent Charge) and 12 Ministers of State, sworn in at one ceremony.

Every minister then takes two oaths before the President, one of office and one of secrecy, in the forms set out in the Third Schedule (Article 75(4)). In the first, the minister promises to do right to all manner of people “without fear or favour, affection or ill-will”.

When no party has a majority

A hung result shows how much room the President has. V. P. Singh led the National Front into a coalition government with two other opposition parties and was sworn in on 2 December 1989, according to Britannica. In 1996 the BJP was the largest party and, Britannica says, the President, Shankar Dayal Sharma, invited its leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to form the government. He was sworn in on 16 May 1996 and, Britannica records, was in office only 13 days before he resigned after failing to attract support from other parties. The Prime Minister’s Office lists his term as ending on 1 June 1996, the day H. D. Deve Gowda’s term begins.

No party won a majority in 1998, and Britannica says the BJP formed a government with regional allies. The AIADMK left that coalition in 1999, Vajpayee was asked to take a vote of confidence, and he lost it by one vote. Manmohan Singh’s appointment in 2004 followed documents of support from Congress’s allies and the Left parties; The Tribune of 20 May 2004 quotes President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam as saying he was “pleased to appoint” him.

The Constitution does not rank these claims. Saxena wanted the President bound in writing to call the majority leader, and Santhanam preferred a flexible convention. Both positions are in the Assembly record, and neither went into Article 75. The 2024 communique lists the considerations the President recorded that year: letters of support, the ability to command a majority, and a pre-election alliance.

Does the Prime Minister have to prove a majority?

Article 75(3) says the Council of Ministers “shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People”. Nothing in it sets a date for a vote after appointment. The Rajya Sabha Secretariat’s guide describes the effect: while Parliament sits, the government’s continuance “depends from moment to moment on its retaining the confidence of the House of the People”. The House can show it has lost confidence by passing a motion of no confidence, defeating the government on a major policy issue, passing an adjournment motion, or refusing supplies or defeating it on a financial measure. Motions of no confidence, adjournment and censure are admissible only in the Lok Sabha, the Secretariat’s 2016 guide adds, which is why the Rajya Sabha cannot vote a government out.

Ambedkar explained the choice on 4 November 1948. Under the parliamentary system, he told the Assembly, members assess the executive “daily” through questions, resolutions and motions, and the electorate does so periodically. “The Draft Constitution in recommending the Parliamentary system of Executive has preferred more responsibility to more stability,” he said.

On where a majority is tested, the Supreme Court has spoken. In S. R. Bommai v. Union of India, decided on 11 March 1994 by nine judges, Justice P. B. Sawant wrote that “the proper course for testing the strength of the Ministry is holding the test on the floor of the House”. The passage concerns a state ministry and a Governor, in cases where support is claimed to have been withdrawn.

Three Lok Sabha episodes show the power at work. V. P. Singh resigned on 7 November 1990 after a vote of no confidence in the Lok Sabha, Britannica reports. Vajpayee resigned after 13 days in 1996. His government fell by one vote in 1999.

Dissolving the Lok Sabha is the council’s other lever. Article 85(2)(b) lets the President dissolve the House, and the Second Schedule of the Transaction of Business Rules lists proposals to dissolve it among the cases that must go before the Cabinet. On 14 October 1949 Santhanam added that there could be “marginal cases” in which a President might decline, in the interest of responsible government, to accept a ministry’s advice to dissolve.

Dissolution does not remove the Prime Minister. In Shamsher Singh (1974) the Supreme Court recalled its 1971 ruling in U. N. Rao v. Indira Gandhi, which followed the dissolution of the Lok Sabha on 27 December 1970, and said the argument that a dissolved House leaves the country without a Prime Minister “was not accepted”.

Who can be Prime Minister

Article 75 lists no qualifications for the Prime Minister. It says a Minister who is for six consecutive months not a member of either House ceases to be a Minister (Article 75(5)), and Article 75(1A) counts the Prime Minister among the Ministers. The Rajya Sabha Secretariat’s 2016 guide names four members of the Rajya Sabha who became Prime Minister: Indira Gandhi, H. D. Deve Gowda, Inder Kumar Gujral and Manmohan Singh. Under Article 88 every minister may speak in and take part in the proceedings of either House, but not vote by virtue of that article.

A member disqualified under the Tenth Schedule cannot be appointed a minister until the end of the member’s term, or until re-elected, whichever comes first (Article 75(1B)); our guide to the anti-defection law explains that law.

How the Prime Minister runs the council

Three provisions anchor the Prime Minister’s control. Article 75(1) lets the President appoint ministers only on the Prime Minister’s advice. Ministers hold office “during the pleasure of the President” (Article 75(2)). Article 78 makes it the Prime Minister’s duty to tell the President every decision of the council on administration and legislation, and to supply any information the President asks for.

Ambedkar said in 1948 that “there cannot be a legal sanction for collective responsibility”. In his account it is enforced only through the Prime Minister, who nominates ministers and can have them dismissed. How the Union Government works covers the three ranks, the 15 percent size cap and the eight Cabinet committees in detail. The Cabinet Secretariat’s list as on 23 June 2026 shows the Prime Minister, 30 Cabinet Ministers, 5 Ministers of State (Independent Charge) and 35 Ministers of State, 71 in all.

The Transaction of Business Rules, 1961, add the working powers. Rule 5(1) says, “The Prime Minister may call for papers from any Department.” Under rule 6 the Prime Minister names the members of each Cabinet committee and may add committees or change their duties, and rule 12 lets the Prime Minister condone a departure from the rules. Rule 4(1) of the Allocation of Business Rules, amended up to 22 July 2026, makes the business of the Cabinet Secretariat the Prime Minister’s. The same rules list the Prime Minister’s Office’s function as “To provide secretarial assistance to the Prime Minister.”