Court case(1996) 6 SCC 734

After the 1996 general election produced a hung Lok Sabha, H.D. Deve Gowda, then Chief Minister of Karnataka and a member of neither House of Parliament, was appointed Prime Minister as leader of the United Front. S.P. Anand filed a public interest petition under Article 32 seeking a writ of quo warranto, contending that a non-member of Parliament could not be appointed Prime Minister because the Prime Minister must command the confidence of the Lok Sabha and be answerable to it.

The petition was dismissed. Ahmadi CJ held that the Prime Minister is one of the Ministers; the words 'a Minister' in Article 75(5) include the Prime Minister, so a person who is not a member of either House may be appointed Prime Minister provided he becomes a member within six months. The Court relied on the practice that Chief Ministers (and, in the Constituent Assembly debates, Prime Ministers) could be non-members for six months, on Har Sharan Verma v. Tribhuvan Narain Singh (1971) and Har Sharan Verma v. Chandra Bhan (1985), and on the parliamentary convention that the President appoints the person most likely to command the confidence of the House. The President's choice of the Prime Minister in a hung House was not a matter the Court would examine; the subsequent vote of confidence had settled the matter.