Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor speaks on his mobile as he comes out of the parliament yesterday.

IANS/New Delhi


Congress MP Shashi Tharoor yesterday favoured the presidential form of government in India, saying it should be “customised in a way that it preserves the rich diversity of the nation and also the democracy”.
Tharoor said looking at the present system of polity and governance in the country it would be a good idea to start the debate of having a presidential form of government.
“The parliamentary system has demonstrated some flaws and the time has come to look for an alternative. The alternative was always there on the table but now is the time to start discussing and debating it,” he said at the launch of Bhanu Dhamija’s book Why India Needs The Presidential System here.
He said nationalist leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru had thought of this idea much before but the discussions got lost later in the chaos of successive coalition governments.
“The fundamental flaws of the parliamentary form of government have become more apparent in the successive coalition governments in the past 25 years,” he added.
Tharoor batted for creating a system wherein a “chief executive” of constituencies can be elected directly by people and “they should be held accountable for the ‘governance business’ after a given point of time”.
The Congress leader said: “I am not saying that we should adopt the presidential system as it is in the US. We can work on it and make it even better and a one more practical for country like India.”
He said the election of Narendra Modi as the prime minister “constantly reminds me of the need of the presidential form of government”, adding “I had a belief in the parliamentary form of government till Modi was elected as the prime minister”.