The Government of India, often abbreviated as GoI, is the union government created by the constitution of India as the legislative, executive and judicial authority of the union of twenty eight states and nine union territories of a constitutionally democratic republic. It is located in New Delhi, the capital of India.
Key Description of Government of India (GOI):
Formation: 26 January 1950; 70 years ago
Country: Republic of India
Website: www.india.gov.in
Seat: Rashtrapati Bhavan (Official Residence of the President of India.)
Legislature: Parliament
Upper House: Rajya Sabha
Leader Chairman (Venkaiah Naidu)
Lower House: Lok Sabha
Leader Speaker: (Om Birla)
Meeting Place: Sansad Bhavan
Head of State President: Ramnath Kovind
Head of Government: Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Main Organ: Cabinet
Head of civil Services: Cabinet secretary (Rajiv Gauba, IAS)
Meeting Place: Central Secretariat
Ministries: 57
Responsible to: Lok Sabha
Executive of Government of India (GOI):
The executive of government is the one that has sole authority and responsibility for the daily administration of the state bureaucracy. The division of power into separate branches of government is central to the republican idea of the separation of powers.
President: The executive power is vested mainly in the president of India, as per Article 53(1) of the constitution. The president has all constitutional powers and exercises them directly or through subordinate officers as per the aforesaid Article 53(1). The president is to act in accordance with aid and advice tendered by the prime minister, who leads the council of ministers as described in Article 74 of the Constitution of India.
Vice President: The vice president is the second highest constitutional position in India after the president.
The vice president represents the nation in the absence of the president and takes charge as acting president in the incident of resignation impeachment or removal of the president.
The vice president also has the legislative function of acting as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
The vice president is elected indirectly by members of an electoral college consisting of the members of both the houses of the parliament in accordance with the system of proportional representation by means of the single transferable vote and the voting is by secret ballot conducted by the election commission.
Prime Minister: The Prime Minister of India, as addressed in the Constitution of India, is the chief of the government, chief adviser to the president, head of the council of ministers and the leader of the majority party in the parliament. The prime minister leads the executive of the Government of India.
The prime minister is the senior member of cabinet in the executive of government in a parliamentary system. The prime minister selects and can dismiss other members of the cabinet; allocates posts to members within the Government; is the presiding member and chairman of the cabinet and is responsible for bringing a proposal of legislation. The resignation or death of the prime minister dissolves the cabinet.
The prime minister is appointed by the president to assist the latter in the administration of the affairs of the executive.
Cabinet, Ministries And Agencies: The Cabinet of India includes the prime minister and cabinet ministers. Each minister must be a member of one of the houses of the parliament.
The cabinet is headed by the prime minister, and is advised by the cabinet secretary, who also acts as the head of the Indian Administrative Service and other civil services.
Other ministers are either as union cabinet ministers, who are heads of the various ministries; or ministers of state, who are junior members who report directly to one of the cabinet ministers, often overseeing a specific aspect of government; or ministers of state (independent charges), who do not report to a cabinet minister.
As per article 88 of the constitution, every minister shall have the right to speak in, and to take part in the proceedings of, either house, any joint sitting of the houses, and any committee of parliament of which he may be named a member, but shall not be entitled to a vote in the house where he is not a member.
Secretaries: A secretary to the Government of India, a civil servant, generally an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, is the administrative head of the ministry or department, and is the principal adviser to the minister on all matters of policy and administration within the ministry/department. Secretaries to the Government of India rank 23rd on Indian order of precedence.
Secretaries at the higher level are assisted by one or many additional secretaries, who are further assisted by joint secretaries.
At the middle they are assisted by directors/deputy secretaries and under secretaries. At the lower level, there are section officers, assistant section officers, upper division clerks, lower division clerks and other secretarial staff.
Ministries and departments of the Government of India:
Ministry | Department(s) |
President's Secretariat | |
Vice President's Secretariat | |
Prime Minister's Office | Atomic Energy |
Space | |
Cabinet Secretariat | |
Agriculture and Farmers Welfare | Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare |
Agricultural Research and Education | |
Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries | |
AYUSH | |
Chemicals and Fertilizers | Chemicals and Petrochemicals |
Fertilizers | |
Pharmaceuticals | |
Civil Aviation | |
Coal | |
Commerce and Industry | Commerce |
Industrial Policy and Promotion | |
Communications | Posts |
Telecommunications | |
Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution | Consumer Affairs |
Food and Public Distribution | |
Corporate Affairs | |
Culture | |
Defence | Defence |
Defence Production | |
Defence Research and Development | |
Ex-servicemen Welfare | |
Development of North Eastern Region | |
Drinking Water and Sanitation | |
Earth Sciences | |
Electronics and Information Technology | |
Environment, Forest and Climate Change | |
External Affairs | |
Finance | Economic Affairs |
Expenditure | |
Financial Services | |
Investment and Public Asset Management | |
Revenue | |
Food Processing Industries | |
Health and Family Welfare | Health and Family Welfare |
Health Research | |
Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises | Heavy Industry |
Public Enterprises | |
Home Affairs | Border Management |
Internal Security | |
Jammu Kashmir Affairs | |
Home | |
Official Language | |
States | |
Housing and Urban Affairs | |
Human Resource Development | Higher Education |
School Education and Literacy | |
Information and Broadcasting | |
Labour and Employment | |
Law and Justice | Justice |
Legal Affairs | |
Legislative | |
Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises | |
Mines | |
Minority Affairs | |
New and Renewable Energy | |
NITI Aayog | |
Panchayati Raj | |
Parliamentary Affairs | |
Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions | Personnel and Training |
Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances | |
Pension and Pensioners' Welfare | |
Petroleum and Natural Gas | |
Power | |
Railways | |
Road Transport and Highways | |
Rural Development | Land Resources |
Rural Development | |
Science and Technology | Biotechnology |
Science and Technology | |
Scientific and Industrial Research | |
Shipping | |
Skill Development and Entrepreneurship | |
Social Justice and Empowerment | Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities |
Social Justice and Empowerment | |
Statistics and Programme Implementation | |
Steel | |
Textiles | |
Tourism | |
Tribal Affairs | |
Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation | |
Women and Child Development | |
Youth Affairs and Sports | Sports |
Youth Affairs | |
Total | |
Ministries | Departments |
58 | 93 |
Civil services:
The Civil Services of India are the civil services and the permanent bureaucracy of India. The executive decisions are implemented by the Indian civil servants.
In the parliamentary democracy of India, the ultimate responsibility for running the administration rests with the elected representatives of the people which are the ministers.
These ministers are accountable to the legislatures which are also elected by the people on the basis of universal adult suffrage.
The ministers are indirectly responsible to the people themselves. But the handful of ministers are not expected to deal personally with the various problems of modern administration.
Thus the ministers lay down the policy and it is for the civil servants to enforce it.
Cabinet Secretary:
The cabinet secretary (IAST: Maṃtrimaṇḍala Saciva) is the top-most executive official and senior-most civil servant of the Government of India.
The cabinet secretary is the ex-officio head of the Civil Services Board, the Cabinet Secretariat, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and head of all civil services under the rules of business of the government.
The cabinet secretary is generally the senior-most officer of the Indian Administrative Service. The cabinet secretary ranks 11th on the Indian order of precedence.
The cabinet secretary is under the direct charge of the prime minister.
Elections And Voting:
India has a quasi-federal form of government, called "union" or "central" government, with elected officials at the union, state and local levels. At the national level, the head of government, the prime minister, is appointed by the president of India from the party or coalition that has the majority of seats in the Lok Sabha.
The members of the Lok Sabha are directly elected for a term of five years by universal adult suffrage through a first-past-the-post voting system.
Members of the Rajya Sabha, which represents the states, are elected by the members of State legislative assemblies by proportional representation, except for 12 members who are nominated by the president.
India is currently the largest democracy in the world, with around 900 million eligible voters, as of 2019.
State and Local Governments:
State governments in India are the governments ruling states of India and the chief minister heads the state government.
Power is divided between union government and state governments.
State government's legislature is bicameral in 5 states and unicameral in the rest. Lower house is elected with 5 years term, while in upper house 1/3 of the total members in the house gets elected every 2 years with 6-year term.
Local government function at the basic level. It is the third level of government apart from union and state governments.
It consists of panchayats in rural areas and municipalities in urban areas. They are elected directly or indirectly by the people.
Union Budget:
The Finance minister of India usually presents the annual union budget in the parliament on the last working day of February.
However, for the F.Y. 2017–18, this tradition had been changed. Now budget will be presented on the 1st day of February. The budget has to be passed by the Lok Sabha before it can come into effect on 1 April, the start of India's fiscal year.
The Union budget is preceded by an economic survey which outlines the broad direction of the budget and the economic performance of the country for the outgoing financial year
India's non-development revenue expenditure had increased nearly five-fold in 2003–04 since 1990–91 and more than tenfold since 1985–1986.
Interest payments are the single largest item of expenditure and accounted for more than 40% of the total non-development expenditure in the 2003–04 budget.
Defense expenditure increased fourfold during the same period and has been increasing because of India's desire to project its military prowess beyond South Asia. In 2007, India's defense spending stood at US$26.5 billion.