The BJP once seriously considered changing the country’s system of government. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was very interested in the presidential form of government. In a speech in 1998 he declared that “we should discuss the merits of the presidential system.”

He said, “I often wonder whether the British Westminster model has been defeated by the Indian reality.” His home minister, LK Advani, had also made a series of speeches and wrote articles pushing for a presidential system. He went so far as to say, “The basic structure doctrine doesn’t bind us to parliamentary democracy.”

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