'Non-BJP state governments and their leaders, navigating today's political landscape, know well they have no clue what awaits around the corner.'
'The chances of charges pressed and oneself getting parked in custody play out on an uneven playing field,' points out Shyam G Menon.
As we scheduled this column for publication, we received the heartbreaking news that Shyam passed away suddenly on Sunday, August 31. We mourn his passing and will forever remember his erudition.
On the face of it, how does it feel when told that no Union minister, chief minister or even the prime minister will be spared dismissal from office if held in custody for 30 consecutive days for offences carrying a jail term of five years?
I won't be surprised if you say: great! To my mind, the bill Home Minister Amit Shah tabled in Parliament on August 20, 2025, has a good chance of finding traction with sections of the public.
Conventionally, we look at ministers, chief ministers and prime ministers as the most important, privileged people in a political setting.
Between the formation of policy and law, and their execution, the former (that is, the formation part) is theoretically more susceptible to debate and discussion than the latter (the execution part).
Execution, which is the retail end of translating policy to action, is where corruption tends to stick.
The murky character of the execution stage is what runs ministers the risk of becoming the public face of some corruption charge or other.
Atop this, would be the longstanding complaint of criminals and criminality in Indian politics and how it affects the general profile of politics in the country.
Disciplining politics has been a pet project with Indian voters, especially that category treating politics as below themselves to be interested in.
A bill forcing politicians to fall in line will therefore have its fans.
As yet, the typical ministerial resignation has been on moral grounds and grounds of moral responsibility.
The willingness to resign and the exit, both reflect the final ownership of the power demitted, as belonging to the people.
It establishes those occupying high office as ephemeral actors. The question can then be naturally posed -- why wait for voluntary exit; why not build its unavoidability into the system?
In the past ten years, there have been instances of ministers, including chief ministers, held in custody for long even as they remained in office.
Probably none of them would have hung on to office as long as they did, had there been a law like the one proposed.
On the face of it therefore, the tabled legislation may find a degree of public support for the anti-corruption and pro-accountability stance it appears to possess.
I can already imagine a sort of person having firm views on how the country should be governed, holding forth on the guts the government showed by tabling the proposed bill on August 20.
Not to mention the sense of justice in it, as none, not even the prime minister, is above the bill's stern gaze.
Indeed, it is this aspect of justice and fairness, which finds mention in the opening part of the statement issued on August 20 by the ministry of home affairs and since available on the Press Information Bureau website.
It said: 'Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation, Shri Amit Shah today introduced the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025, the Union Territories (Amendment) Bill, 2025, and the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2025 in the Lok Sabha. Union Home Minister and Minister of Cooperation stated in a series of posts on 'X' that, considering the Modi government's commitment against political corruption in the country and the public outrage, he introduced a Constitutional Amendment Bill in Parliament today with the consent of the Lok Sabha Speaker.
'This bill ensures that individuals holding important constitutional positions, such as the Prime Minister, Chief Ministers, and Ministers of the Central and State Governments, cannot run the government while in jail. He further stated that the purpose of this bill is to elevate the declining standards of morality in public life and bring integrity to politics.'
But is it possible to consider the bill as this innocent and well-intentioned?
As some observers have already pointed out, we live in times of growing centralisation of power with many of the investigative agencies tasked with charging the accused (any accused), reporting to the central government.
Thanks to this, state governments, especially those ruled by political parties from the Opposition, feel nervous.
Adding to their insecurity would be the emergent provision in select laws to hold people in custody without proper judicial scrutiny along with the rising propensity to evoke harsh laws against citizens.
Take, for instance, the Supreme Court's recent observations on a central investigative agency, frequently in the news and often thought of by the public as wielded opportunistically by the government.
On August 7, 2025, The Times of India reported: 'The Supreme Court on Thursday sternly reminded the Enforcement Directorate that the central agency must function strictly within the bounds of law, stating, "You can't act like a crook." A bench comprising Justices Surya Kant, Ujjal Bhuyan and N Kotiswar Singh made the observations while hearing petitions seeking a review of the top court's July 2022 ruling which upheld ED's power of arrest, search and seizure under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).'
On August 18, The Hindu reported: 'The Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai on Monday (August 18, 2025) said any adverse oral remarks made by the Supreme Court against the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) were dispassionate and based entirely on facts, even as the Central agency's counsel rued these comments "percolate" to create a bad impression among the people and even within the judiciary itself.'
Non-BJP state governments and their leaders, navigating today's political landscape, know well they have no clue what awaits around the corner.
The chances of charges pressed and oneself getting parked in custody play out on an uneven playing field.
Consequently, the argument that no minister should be legally required to step down till the charges against him/her are proved correct, holds water.
There is also the question of how actions based on poorly thought-out legislation impact our general idea of law and justice.
For instance, the higher the office an example is made of, the stronger it rests as precedent for average citizens caught in similar situations.
It may be used to stifle questions. When a democracy encourages drift towards fewer and fewer questions raised, when it encourages drift towards abject ideological and political compliance -- it is a death of democracy from within.
Legislation in a diverse democracy must anticipate rule by parties like the Bharatiya Janata Party, wherein dominance risks being used as brute force to shape a national environment.
Wielded politically, the provisions in the bill of August 20 can damage our federal structure and spread instability, which may then be addressed using higher centralisation.
It can become a vicious circle.
When it comes to the controversial piece of legislation, which Amit Shah introduced in Parliament on August 20, 2025, recommending loss of office should a union minister, chief minister or prime minister find himself/herself in the earlier mentioned predicament, I don't celebrate even if I find potential scenarios leveling and thereby vicariously pleasing.
I worry about a widespread gullibility, which could have some of us assuming simplistically that Shah's legislation is justice manifest.
The root of the problem lies in how we react to such dramatic pieces of legislation.
We like to see people humbled and that craving stands known and predicted.
The management of that response falls in the realm of managing optics, a skill the ruling dispensation has never been short of.
Why should we consider the tabled legislation, submitted for no pressing reason, as anything better than optics management?
As anything better than our response foreseen and the same exploited to add luster to our rulers?
The above doesn't seem the full picture or the full scale of patterns at play.
If the proposed legislation is approved by Parliament, then the onus of making sure that a chief minister or prime minister steps down, will likely vest with governors and the president.
These are offices recognised as those of the first citizen at state and national levels.
Prima facie, there would seem nothing wrong in strengthening the hands of this balancing chain of command, which is not a direct product of India's state and general elections.
The President is indirectly elected while the governor is appointed. By instructing prime ministers and chief ministers to leave, these offices may seem to exercise the right of the citizen to better governance.
As mentioned earlier in the case of anti-corruption support emerging for the proposed bill, here too, support may manifest citing the hands of the Indian citizen strengthened.
But imagine a scenario in which, instead of being just a healthy and adequate counter balance to Parliament and elected state assemblies, the line of command represented by the offices of governors and the President becomes something tangibly powerful (remember -- it is further empowerment of a line of command that is either indirectly elected or plain, appointed).
It not only risks becoming a subversion of democracy from within the operating framework of our democracy but it also risks serious political ambition migrating to these offices given their emergent influence and thus, having elected representatives systematically overshadowed by these indirectly elected and politically appointed offices.
Once again, the worry here is the majoritarian players in our political ecosystem and the fascist politics they choose to align with.
Playbooks for such subversion exist in humanity's recent history and India's right-wing is known to hold in high regard, the authors of these scripts.
Already in India, the ecosystem of non-elected powerful offices at the state and national levels appear to act beholden to the ruling dispensation at the Centre signifying thus a central ecosystem that is quite powerful and mutually supportive and evoking little of the quality of checking, the non-elected offices are supposed to show.
Instances of checking have mostly featured Opposition-led state governments, as victims.
Bottomline -- the BJP deserves credit for openly stating its broad political intention and going after it systematically.
For example: Top BJP politicians have said in the past that the party aims to rule India for long.
To be noted is also the angle that the BJP may have tabled the controversial bill in Parliament knowing well that the party's majoritarian face and its addiction to its agenda will be among factors provoking opposition to the bill.
To my eyes, there seems an element of deliberate gamble, an aspect of baiting and daring.
Yet a decade into such politics, India's Opposition still struggles to solidly counter the kind of political machinery the BJP represents.
Issues like the ongoing allegations of vote theft and Bihar's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), bring Opposition parties together.
But do we have evidence that they recognise comprehensively and consistently what they are up against, including the systemic damage India's political Right is capable of?
As reported on August 20, the proposed bill has been sent to a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) composed of 21 members from the Lok Sabha and 10 from the Rajya Sabha for scrutiny.
Questions have also been raised on how the BJP plans to get the bill passed in Parliament for Constitution amendment bills require passage by a majority of the members in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of members present and voting.
The BJP currently lacks the required numbers. Alongside, there is also concern that situations may crop up wherein Opposition MPs get suspended (as happened in December 2023) and the required majority is managed with whoever remains.
Hopefully, the JPC as well as the Opposition, base their recommendations and shape their actions knowing fully well that we live in times when democracy risks being subverted from within, most notably by majoritarian political parties wishing us to see them as country incarnate and their leaders as national figures beyond question.
But first, let's stop lapping up the ruling dispensation's optics-management, which is nothing but an exploitation of our innate gullibility.
I think, as ever with India's political Right, in the case of the latest controversial bill too, it seeks to leverage our credulity to further the right-wing's agenda.
After all, no other large political formation around faces the electorate with the stated intent of altering India as the right-wing does.
Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff