New Delhi, Jan. 29: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emulated his immediate predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee, not his one-time mentor P.V. Narasimha Rao or his latter-day friend George W. Bush, before being hospitalised for a bypass surgery.

The upshot: the country has been trying to figure out for a week who is in charge.

Rao was not hospitalised during his tenure as Prime Minister but whenever he went abroad, the stickler for paperwork used to issue a note through his cabinet secretary Surinder Singh, putting the then home minister, S.B. Chavan, in charge.

Bush, who was hospitalised twice during his reign, exercised an option added to the US Constitution that allows a smooth handover of temporary charge. The 25th Amendment allows the US President to self-declare to the Senate and the House of Representatives “that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office”, following which the chief executive’s powers pass on to the Vice-President.

The President can resume his duties once he writes to both the House and the Senate that he is capable of discharging his powers.

India does not have such unambiguous procedures. When Vajpayee was wheeled into hospital for a first knee surgery, he did not name his number two. An aide then said the PMO was being relocated to Mumbai. Only once, when Vajpayee was abroad and there was an issue over bringing Bihar under President’s rule, did he fax a note authorising L.K Advani to convene a cabinet meeting.

When Singh was hospitalised last Friday, many had assumed that Pranab Mukherjee, second in the pecking order of the council of ministers, would officiate. However, when a notification was issued, it merely said the external affairs minister was given charge of the finance ministry — which was with Singh — but temporarily.

Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office had said Mukherjee would “naturally” preside over the cabinet meetings — which he has — and suggested that it was “foolish” to ask for the line of command to be spelt out.

However, in a system where power flows from the rites of ceremony and the conduct of rituals in the glare of the nation, Mukherjee’s status turned ambiguous the moment it was clear that defence minister A.K. Antony and Vice-President Hamid Ansari would take on some of the Prime Minister’s mandated responsibilities before and on Republic Day.

Antony gave away the bravery awards to children and placed a wreath at the site of Amar Jawan Jyoti on India Gate. Ansari was seated next to the chief guest at the Republic Day parade in the Prime Minister’s place while Mukherjee was given his designated place as foreign minister, next to P. Chidambaram.

For the protocol requirement of placing a wreath on the coffin of former President R. Venkataraman, Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state in the PMO, was “messaged” to fulfil the responsibility.

But meeting such courtesies was less worrisome than crafting structured responses or using the reflexes that an emergency situation would call for when there was no clear command chain, especially as India is nuclear.

“We do not have a clear sense of who’s in charge,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, political scientist and columnist. “We do not have an ex-officio line of command. Quick decisions are required in an unpredictable world such as we live in. In cases like a surgery, where there is pre-planning, an arrangement could surely have been in place.”

“They did a good job of disguising who’s in command. Pranab is in charge of the command, still it helps to have it clarified,” Mehta added.

According to the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) that was put in place by the cabinet committee on security in January 2003 when the NDA was in power, the nuclear button will be in the hands of the civilian-political leadership headed by the Prime Minister.

Although India’s nuclear doctrine is committed to building and maintaining a credible minimum deterrent and pursuing a posture of “no first-use”, it states that nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage. It adds that retaliatory attacks can only be authorised by the civilian-political leadership through the NCA.

If the Prime Minister is incapacitated, who authorises a retaliatory strike if it is called for? The senior-most minister in the NCA’s political council, made of the cabinet committee on security affairs with powers to co-opt more members. The committee includes the Prime Minister, the home minister, the foreign minister and the defence minister.

But unlike the US which has a clear and empowered hierarchy to cope with such exigencies, the doctrine has not disclosed the pecking order. In the NDA’s time, the secrecy raised the question of who would “press the button” when Vajpayee was away — Advani, the home minister who was re-designated deputy Prime Minister, or Brajesh Mishra, the then national security adviser-cum-principal secretary to the Prime Minister?

“There was a system but we would still like to keep it top secret,” a former Vajpayee aide told The Telegraph.

It is believed that the “system” adopted by the UPA dispensation in such an extreme situation vested the powers in the CCS. The committee is expected to take a decision on the advice and guidance of the NCA’s executive council consisting of the national security adviser, the defence secretary, the foreign secretary, the cabinet secretary and the service chiefs.

Part of the system’s fuzziness arises from the Constitution’s silence on the Prime Minister’s powers or the succession question, assuming that political decisions would be dictated by convention and propriety and not patronage and power play.

“This is not a presidential system like the US where you name the chain of command. The executive powers vest in the council of ministers. The senior-most minister is the Prime Minister who only has the right to administer. Any Prime Minister routinely sleeps for some hours. Does this mean there’s no one in charge of the government then?” asked Shanti Bhushan, constitutional lawyer and former law minister.

Most of Vajpayee’s predecessors nominated deputies in their absence. Jawaharlal Nehru had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel but there was no occasion for Patel to “act” as Prime Minister. Indira Gandhi had Morarji Desai and, later, Mukherjee. Congress old-timers recalled that she trusted the latter unflinchingly. For Rajiv Gandhi, it was Rao.

Congress sources said it was “inexpedient” for Singh to name Mukherjee officially because UPA leaders Sharad Pawar and Lalu Prasad could have felt “slighted”.

Political scientist Mehta said: “Maybe you don’t want to be seen to be taking sides or saying something about the future. But that’s not a good enough excuse.”