Evaluate the role of the Union Cabinet's collective responsibility in concluding international agreements in India.

Under Article 75(3), the Council of Ministers is collectively responsible to the Lok Sabha [1]. Treaty-making is an executive function under Article 73 read with Entry 14 of the Union List [1]. Collective responsibility is therefore the main check on how India takes on international obligations, but it is not a complete one.

Role and strengths

• Shared decision: Major agreements are taken as government decisions, not as one minister's choice. All ministers stand or fall together on them.
• Indirect parliamentary control: Because the Cabinet answers to the Lok Sabha, agreements can be questioned through Question Hour, debates and, as a last resort, a no-confidence motion.
• Speed and confidentiality: Cabinet-led negotiation allows quick and discreet bargaining, which trade and security pacts need.
• Legislative backstop: If a treaty changes domestic law, Parliament must pass a law under Article 253. It can do this even on State List subjects [1].

Limitations

• Accountability comes after the fact: No law sets out the procedure India must follow before taking on treaty obligations. Parliament mostly comes in only when a treaty has to be implemented [2].
• Centralisation: Collective responsibility assumes the Cabinet actually deliberates. The Leader of Opposition has alleged that the India–U.S. deal was concluded without informing the Union Cabinet [3]. Whatever the truth of that charge, it shows the risk that the Cabinet ends up approving decisions already taken elsewhere.
• Majority and party discipline: A government with a stable majority rarely faces a real threat from a no-confidence motion. The check is weaker in practice than on paper.
• Executive latitude: In Maganbhai Ishwarbhai Patel (1969), the Supreme Court allowed the government to implement the Kutch boundary award without a parliamentary law, because no territory was ceded.
• Federal gap: States have no formal role, even though trade and water treaties affect subjects in the State List.

Verdict: Collective responsibility is necessary but not sufficient. It makes the government answerable in principle, but it does not ensure scrutiny before India is bound by an agreement.

Collective responsibility keeps treaty-making inside the system of parliamentary accountability, but that accountability is mostly retrospective. The way forward is a law on treaty-making procedure, as discussed in the NCRWC's consultation paper [2]. It could require that the date of Cabinet approval is recorded, that major agreements are laid before a parliamentary committee, and that States are consulted on subjects that affect them. Together these would bring practice in line with the spirit of Article 75(3).