P Chidambaram writes: Defiant push to change Constitution

Commentators described the BJP-led government as a ‘minority’ government that will force Mr Modi to be more circumspect and restrained. I did not share that view. They thought that Mr Modi will be more deferent to Parliament, but that too was belied by the Winter session.

Apparently, on Mr Modi’s instructions, the ministers and MPs carried on in the usual aggressive way, showed scant respect to Parliamentary rules and conventions, and rode roughshod over the Opposition

Written by: P Chidambaram

6 min readDec 29, 2024 10:44 AM IST First published on: Dec 29, 2024 at 06:30 AM IST

Shortly after the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, I predicted that the BJP-led government will continue to run the country as it had in the two earlier terms. The BJP’s reduced strength of 240 seats (below the simple majority mark) was no deterrent because crucial support was provided by the TDP (16 seats) and the JD-U (12 seats). The other allies boosted the total of the NDA to 293 — not very different from the ‘BJP only’ numbers of 282 (2014) and 303 (2019). Mr Narendra Modi quickly convinced his party members and allies that he enjoyed the same support of the people as in 2014 and 2019. The initial nervousness of the elected NDA MPs vanished.

Arrogance was back

Commentators described the BJP-led government as a ‘minority’ government that will force Mr Modi to be more circumspect and restrained. I did not share that view. They thought that Mr Modi will be more deferent to Parliament, but that too was belied by the Winter session. Apparently, on Mr Modi’s instructions, the ministers and MPs carried on in the usual aggressive way, showed scant respect to Parliamentary rules and conventions, and rode roughshod over the Opposition. Sample the dismissive and accusatory interventions of the normally polite Mr Rajnath Singh and the usually restrained Mr S. Jaishankar. Mr Kiren Rijiju was back to his arrogant ways.

In the last week of the Winter Session, the government introduced the Constitution (One-hundred and twenty-ninth) Amendment Bill for simultaneous elections, and promptly referred the Bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. It was an act of defiance in the face of insufficient numbers. At the time of introducing the Bill, 263 votes were cast in favour of, and 198 votes against, the Bill. The government was not able to demonstrate that it had the support of two-thirds of the members present and voting required to pass a Constitution Amendment Bill. The Opposition needs only 182 votes in the Lok Sabha to defeat the Bill. The I.N.D.I.A. bloc has 234 seats.

Weighty reasons

Why should the Bill be defeated? There are several weighty reasons:

📌 Firstly, the provisions of the Constitution that the Lok Sabha (Article 83) and the legislative assemblies (Article 172) must be elected for a term of 5 years is a basic feature of the Constitution, and Parliament does not have the power to amend the basic features. Suppose the Constitution Amendment Bill had proposed a bizarre change — that the legislative assemblies will be elected for a term of one year at a time. It will be unconstitutional because the change will reduce elections to a farce and the legislative assemblies to a circus. Likewise, to stipulate that the term of the legislative assemblies will be co-terminus with the term of the Lok Sabha will reduce the legislative assemblies — and the state governments — to a ridiculous farce. The term of an elected legislative assembly may be anything between 6 months to 5 years. Recall the time three elections were held to the Lok Sabha in 1996, 1998 and 1999. If the proposal for One Nation One Election had been in force in the 1990s, all the state legislative assemblies would have gone through three elections in three years and we would have bid goodbye to the concept of stable state governments.

📌 Secondly, in a parliamentary democracy, there is no concept of a fixed term for the government. The central government must be responsible to the Lok Sabha every day — meaning thereby that it must enjoy the support of the majority of MPs every day. Just because the central government lost its majority support, why should state governments, responsible to the state legislature, be destabilized by a constitutional fiat? Suppose, a month after the election of a legislative assembly, the Lok Sabha is dissolved: why should the state assembly, along with all assemblies, be dissolved?

📌 Thirdly, no Opposition party that runs a state government will vote to defeat a prime minister because, if the PM falls and the Lok Sabha is dissolved, all legislative assemblies will be dissolved too. Chief Ministers will rush to support the incumbent prime minister in order to save their own tenure and the tenure of their assemblies!

📌 Fourthly, it is an unwritten rule of a parliamentary democracy that a prime minister enjoying the support of the Lok Sabha may at any time advise the President to dissolve the House and call an election. The President must accept the advice and call for a fresh election. A wily prime minister, if he is sure that his party will be re-elected at the Centre, may advise premature dissolution of the Lok Sabha in order to get rid of state governments that are formed by Opposition parties. The fate of state governments will not be in the hands of the state legislative assemblies but in the hands of the prime minister. This is the anti-thesis of federalism in a parliamentary democracy.

📌 Fifthly, why should a candidate stand for election when her term is uncertain? And why should people vote for a candidate when they do not know how long the legislator will represent them?

📌 Sixthly, the real intention behind the Bill is to impoverish, weaken and ultimately get rid of state-specific parties that have prevented the BJP from winning elections in key states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar and West Bengal.

Given the present numbers, the Bill will be defeated. Then, why introduce the Bill? Has the BJP devised a Machiavellian scheme to pass the Bill? Only time will tell.