High priority will be given to the provisions of minimum needs on rural areas and to integrated rural development... the planning process will be rev… - Basappa Danappa Jatti

His acting presidency was not without controversy. When in April 1977, the then Union Home Minister, Charan Singh, took the debatable decision to dissolve the Assemblies of nine States, he declined to sign the order, and broke the tradition of the President accepting the advice of the Cabinet. Though he later signed the order, he took the stand that the Centre's action should not only be politically and constitutionally correct but also appear to be proper.

My government pledges itself to fulfill in every way the mandate given to it by the people. In doing so, it will not take the people for granted or assume they know nothing and that the government alone knows all answers and solutions. The traumatic experience of the last two years [Emergency] during which many atrocities were committed on the people and they had to undergo untold sufferings and some have even died, has brought home the relevance of this.

He was elected Vice-President of India on October 31, 1972. During the interregnum of the death of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and the election of N. Sanjiva Reddy as President, he acted as President.