Parliament, CAG, EC: More Pillars Crumble as Modi Tightens Hold

P. Raman

It is really a bad time for the Indian democracy. The year 2023 witnessed the Modi establishment extending its control on democratic institutions like the Election Commission and CAG. Indian parliament looks more like Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Grand National Assembly.

Let’s begin with the subjugation of Bharatiya Janata Party organisation. The electoral victory in Hindi hinterland has put Modi in a triumphalist mood. The process of centralisation and bureaucratisation of the organisation is now complete. Chief ministers are fixed at will by Amit Shah on the advice of internal experts. This time, even the formalities like the parliamentary board’s endorsement and central observers’s report have been done away with.

Instead, the central observers carried a sealed cover which contained the name of the high commands choice for the chief ministership. And the observers respectfully opened it and declared the winner. The sealed cover is a symbol of authority which every one in the party must accept without grudge.

Gone are the days when those those enjoying maximum support among the elected MLAs should take the cake. The GenX BJP CMs are not answerable to MLAs or their electors but high command. No one else. Amit Shah’s trust is most crucial. Otherwise you lose the job within weeks. That is the story that Tirat Singh Rawat’s four-month tenure as Uttarakhand’s CM tells us.

The sealed cover doctrine is a Gujarat model. It was first introduced when Bhupendra Patel replaced Vijay Rupani as chief minister in 2021. Since then, the CEO-style imposition had become the norm.

The choice of the new CMs – Bhajan Lal Sharma, Mohan Yadav and Vishudeo Sai – follows a pattern: confirmed RSS background with tilak on forehead, less known outside the state if not first timers and with little following in the state. They perpetually look to high command for support.

The very first action of the new CMs was to issue full-page advertisements in Delhi with their photos with PM. They all look to Adityanath and Manohar Lal Khattar as role models. So much so, the first decision of new MP cabinet was to ban sale of meat and eggs in public places. Bulldozers roam on the streets looking for the right targets.

The parliament

Now, parliament is the latest to fall for the new imperious style. During the winter session, a record number of 146 opposition MPs – 100 from the Lok Sabha and 46 from Rajya Sabha – have been suspended. During the Modi rule, expulsions and suspensions in parliament shot up by 71 times.

From 2019, presiding officers resorted to suspensions at the drop of a hat. During this winter session, every day the Speaker and Chairman drew up a list of what they called violators of discipline and went on announcing the names of MPs to be suspended.

At least in one case, name of a MP who was on leave was included.

His suspension was withdrawn when the error was pointed out by the concerned member.

It all began with the jumping of two youths into the House from the visitors gallery – again a first – to highlight the growing unemployment. To heighten the drama, the youths burst smoke canisters. They had pamphlets calling PM a ‘missing person’. All such embarrassing details were played down by the government’s vast publicity machinery and the mainstream media.

Instead, the intruders were charged charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, while the the BJP MP who issued passes to them went scot free. For, he is tilakdhari, with a prominent trishul in the background of vibhuti on forehead.

The main demand of the suspended opposition members was a discussion in House on the serious security breach happened. They also insisted on the PM and home minister come to the House to explain the circumstances under which the security breach happened. This is a legitimate right the members this august House had exercised in the past. Presiding officers have generally been very lenient on such protests.

Consider what happened after a more threatening attack on parliament happened in December, 2001. The opposition Congress and other parties insisted on the PM’s presence in the House. Unlike Modi and Shah, Vajpayee and home minister L.K. Advani readily came to the House and gave an account of the line of investigations into attack. The government side also allowed a short duration discussion in both Houses.

Similarly, parliament remained paralysed for weeks together when BJP was in the opposition on the issue of coal allocations. Such expressions of dissent were always viewed as legitimate mode of expressing democratic protest.

Two senior ministers of the Modi cabinet – Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitely – had in the past forcefully disagreed with what Speaker Om Birla and Rajya Sabha chairman Dhankhar now describe violation of parliamentary discipline. On September 7, 2012, Swaraj had said: “Not allowing Parliament to function is a form of democratic protest.”

Jaitely, senior minister and close aide of Modi even when L.K. Advani was in contest for the prime ministership, said: “When Parliament is used to ignore issues… parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic.” Jaitely said so at Ranchi on January 30, 2011.

The two late colleagues of prime minister Modi were simply reiterating the existing the parliamentary traditions. Disruptions have never considered as a punishable offence deserving suspensions. It is a pernicious practice now being imposed by the two incumbent presiding officers. Apparently, parliamentary management has become part of the larger Modi project to perpetuate a system of duopoly.

This is what political thinker Pratap Bhanu Mehta describes as ‘India’s monumental tragedy.’ Parliament as an institution of functioning democracy is effectively dead, he says. He hit the bull’s eye when he says that Modi wields power without any seriously effective constitutional limitations.

What happened in the House since the mass suspensions confirm this conclusion. With the opposition benches nearly empty, ministers came and bulldozed bills. Amit Shah pushed the three bills affecting the entire criminal justice system by voice vote in both Houses.

Demand from the BJP’s women for more time to discuss the bills was curtly brushed aside.

Also rushed through were such crucial legislations as the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Bill, Telecommunications. Bill, and Press and Registration of Periodicals Bill. And at the end of the session it was declared that a 74% productivity was achieved in the opposition-mukt parliament.

The decline of parliament as a deliberative body under the present dispensation looks really alarming This week, the PRS Legislative Research revealed that about half of the bills passed by the 17th Lok Sabha were cleared after less than two hours’ discussion. Only 16% were referred to standing committees.

Also, the proportion of the bills referred to standing committees came down from 72% during 15th Lok Sabha to just 16% during 17th Lok Sabha. No bill was referred to House committees this winter session.

The EC

The Election Commission was the next in line of fire. So far, the election commissioners, including the CEC, were appointed by a three-member panel consisting of the PM, opposition nominee and the Chief Justice of India. The system was introduced following a Supreme Court judgement.

The new bill passed by during the winter session excludes the CJI from the panel. The CJI’s position will be filled a minister nominated by the PM. Thus Modi has an assured majority in the three-member selection panel.

This has prompted the retired Justice Rohington F Nariman, a former solicitor general, to describe the bill as one severely imperilling the independence of the Election Commission. He wanted the judiciary to strike down the amended act.

The CAG

Tow months ago, the last bastion of resistance fell. Comptroller of Audit and Accounts was totally silenced in October, when Girish Murmu, a Gujarat cadre officer, was appointed as CAG in August 2020, it was seen as virtual death for CAG. For, Murmu was considered as a trusted Modi aide and principal secretary to him when he was chief minister. He had also worked with Amit Shah.

However, the deep state within CAG, an institution of high repute, showed signs of occasional resistance. Murmu’s strategy was to concentrate on cases in opposition-ruled states and avoid central accounts. This was greatly successful. Despite this, the government was infuriated when CAG came out with a number reports critical of Centre’s projects.

The Modi establishment retaliated by allegedly transferring the officials who prepared the offending reports. Their reports had dented the Modi’s claim of being a corruption-free government.

The offending reports had brought out several irregularities in the implementation of Ayushman Bharat and Dwarka Expressway.

The decline of CAG under Modi has been really disheartening. An analysis by The Hindu showed that the number of reports averaged 22 between 2019 and 2023. During the pre-Modi days it was as high as 40.

This is the broad position as far as the checks and balances to unbridled executive power envisaged by the Indian constitution are concerned. In sum, there is no obstacle to the abuse of authority. Narendra Modi has accomplished all this in less than two terms – ten years – and is now hoping to return to power in the 2024 elections. If he succeeds, there will be no more pillars left to crumble.

(P. Raman is a veteran journalist. Courtesy: The Wire.)

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Are We Headed for an Open Autocracy?

Anand K. Sahay

We are in a time of momentous transition. Recent events suggest that as a nation we could be headed for life-altering turbulence. Separately, each episode is of high impact, and together they have the potential to accelerate a process in the direction of an open autocracy that could betoken, for all practical purposes, a one-party state apparatus – bidding adieu to the constitution we have nurtured for 75 years – if circumstances remain supportive.

Predictably enough, in the short run, the most critical of these would be the return of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office in the next Lok Sabha election, five months away. Whether as a propaganda trick or not, Modi has recently declared that a third straight win for him was a foregone conclusion.

Looking at the country’s political map, it is a no-brainer that an effective coming together of the significant sections of the opposition in the major states will block Modi’s further advance, and that may result in his relegation to the background. He appears to have way too many adversaries within the saffron universe who could turn vengeful if power slips from his grasp.

The top shots in Lucknow, and not a few in Nagpur, the city of the RSS headquarters, or in Delhi, Bhopal and Jaipur, to say nothing of the second or third string players in elsewhere, who now pretend to be obsequious or dutiful, are likely to lose little time in getting even for real or perceived slights.

On the other hand, A failure on the part of the INDIA alliance parties to recognise the magnitude of the historical moment they are navigating is poised to leave each of them isolated. Unity is, therefore, an existential imperative. Are they aware of this reality?

If anything, the recent assembly polls in the northern states, which the BJP won decisively, showed that the local Congress satraps were blissfully unaware of the great political significance of these particular elections and carried on as though it was business as usual. So was the Congress leadership, else it would have rapped the three erring chieftains on their knuckles for their tunnel vision when there was still time.

Rahul Gandhi was candid enough to bring up the subject in the December 21 meeting of the Congress Working Committee but, with the Congress, there is no knowing that the party won’t fluff its lines again when it deals with partners and allies to prepare for the parliament election.

After being displaced from its high perch 30-odd years ago – when the party was indeed a gargantuan enterprise – it has not quite figured out how to operate the philosophy of working in tandem with entities some of whom may well have a chip on their shoulder, being state parties that have made space for themselves by edging out the Congress over time. Working in genuine partnership with the Congress is a lesson that the state parties of the INDIA alliance also need to learn – and in quick time. There is not much time left.

Comparisons of the present situation with the Janata experiment do not hold water. The entity that regional parties of the day (including the BJP’s precursor, Jana Sangh, was also just that at the time) were called upon to ally with was not the Congress but a disgruntled Congress rump.

Modi played a high-stakes game in the recent elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He would have been acutely conscious that in the event of a serious setback in this battle, the wolves within the BJP would be out, baying for his blood. They would question his ability – or even credentials – to lead the party in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election. These polls were close to being a point of reckoning, if not a make or break moment, for the prime minister, although this was not apparent. Inherent in them was the potential to bring the 10-year Modi rule to a turning point, whether history marked a turn or not.

It is not clear the prime minister’s Congress opponents figured any of this. They did not discern the sensitivity of the moment. They went about as though this was just another poll battle. They didn’t understand that a positive result would give Modi the leap and momentum in advance of the key election in 2024 and help him set the field for the main battle ahead.

Though Modi was taking his chances, he was not playing blind when he forced the BJP’s key state leaders – the architects of its past wins in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – out of the reckoning, appealing to the electorate to cast their vote in his name. He was aware that the wind of communalism was in his sails. Two important considerations would have weighed as inordinately powerful factors – Ayodhya and Kashmir.

After a long four-year wait, the Supreme Court decided to take up the Kashmir case – the challenge to the Union government jettisoning the constitutional autonomy of J&K. The arguments being reported in the press gave ample indication which way things were going. To many it seemed that the timing of an event of such magnitude may not be unrelated to the electoral timetable. The judgment came on December 11, 2023, after the recent assembly election results were announced, but forms a prelude to the parliament election due early next year.

Arguably the most crucial event in setting the narrative of the new nationalism espoused by Modi and his party was the November 2019 Ayodhya judgment of the Supreme Court, which called the destruction of the Babri Masjid a “criminal act” but also, defying logic and common sense, handed over possession of the site on which it had stood to the so-called Hindu parties, meaning a clutch of Hindutva outfits.

Since then, activities associated with the construction of the new temple to Lord Rama have been flooding the newspapers and social media. They have also found a regular mention in the BJP’s speeches during the assembly elections. The inauguration of the temple scheduled for January 22, 2024, is the primary news in the Modi calendar, and is dutifully reflected in the mainstream media.

This background became the setting for the win in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, which has unbound the Prometheus of Hindutva, who is portrayed as a heroic figure – greater than anything that has happened to the Hindu supremacist ideology since its inception. To add more grist to the mill, the temple disputes of Varanasi and Mathura appear to be continually stoked in the direction desired by the new nationalists by various levels of our judicial system, not excluding the Supreme Court.

Senior BJP leaders now routinely refer to Modi as the ‘best’ prime minister India has ever had, clearly surpassing Vajpayee and not to mention the great leaders of the freedom movement, such as Nehru, who is just about recognized as a former prime minister – and sought to be made less than significant. The already-established Modi cult owes not a little to its forceful promotion by Modi himself, who seeks to portray himself as larger than life and all-conquering. The G20 meet in Delhi this year was an illustration.

It is in the reign of this cult figure that a senior functionary of the Ayodhya temple administration has declared the upcoming inaugural of the temple on January 22 as an event of history on par with the independence of India from British rule in 1947. The new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh has said that the prime meridian, the internationally recognised zero degree longitude line, will now be made to pass through Ujjain in his state, which is the seat of the Lord Shiva as Mahakaal (the Great Time). The currently recognised marker is Greenwich near London, and the international time zones are calculated in relation to Greenwich to arrive at Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Modi is the “strong leader”, the Hindutva forces hanker for, veritably the current avatar of the “Chakravarti samrat” of ancient India, a mighty, conquering ruler who cannot be accountable to his subjects, and who is beyond questioning or reproach.

Then it is no surprise that the prime minister declared to a newspaper in an interview, ignoring the parliament which was in session, that the December 13 incident, which saw the breach of the security system in the new parliament building and the entry in utterly dumbfounding circumstances of some youths, shouting slogans and letting off smoke-filled canisters, into the Lok Sabha chamber, was “serious”, but “there shall be no debate.”

What followed was predictable enough as the presiding officers of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, in a space of three days suspended nearly 150 opposition MPs because they made a ruckus and showed protest placards when their demand for a statement by the Union home minister was ignored by the Chair.

For all practical purposes, the prime minister’s statement about not encountering a debate became a diktat for those who run the chambers of parliament.

It is plain that while Prometheus may have now broken free, thanks to multi-sided institutional capitulation, the institutions of modern India are themselves now in chains, waiting upon the will of the master. After this, if the next engagement is in the bag for the ruler, we may only anticipate a turn of enormous magnitude in our constitutional and political history.

This is the inverted reality the INDIA opposition alliance can overlook at its own peril as it goes about in its inscrutable meandering fashion to chart out an electoral battle plan. Grand upsets are a part of history, including our own not so distant electoral past. But it is not chance that brings it about.

(Anand K. Sahay is a political commentator based in New Delhi. Courtesy: The Wire.)