In our Parliamentary system of government, the Prime Minister is the Head of the Government. He is the leader of the House of the People (Lok Sabha). Article 75(3) of the Constitution says that “the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People.” Article 75(2) ensures the individual responsibility of a minister. Thus, the Ministers and the Prime Minister are individually and collectively answerable for their acts of omission and commission to the Lok Sabha that represents the people’s sovereign will. 

On 13 December 2023, the 22nd anniversary of the 2001 terror attack on the Parliament, two men, Sagar Sharma and D. Manoranjan, entered the Lok Sabha, jumped down into the Central Hall from the visitors’ gallery and lobbed coloured gas canisters, engulfing the House in thick yellow plumes of smoke and triggering panic among MPs, in what is construed as the most appalling security breach ever. Imagine if they had carried poisonous gas, bombs and grenades. Pratap Simha, the BJP MP from Mysuru, facilitated their entry. Two others, Neelam Verma and Amol Shinde, stood outside, raising slogans and spraying gas from canisters. Six Bhagat Singh Fan Club members had planned the attack on the Parliament. They were frustrated, unemployed young people venting anger against the government. 

In such a situation, it is common for the concerned Minister to make a statement in the House, debriefing members about the situation. Hence, it was expected that Amit Shah, the Home Minister, who is also in charge of security, or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the House, would be present suo moto the next day and make a statement apprising the members of the incident. In December 2001, when the Parliament House was attacked, Home Minister L.K. Advani made a statement. However, Amit Shah and Narendra Modi chose not to be present in the House when it assembled on the 14th morning, making light of the incident, let alone making a statement. It is an insult to the Parliament. This made the opposition members agitated. They demanded the Home Minister should come to the House and make a statement, which is legitimate in a parliamentary democracy. 

Amit Shah and Narendra Modi preferred to speak on the issue in an interview with a TV channel and at an event when the House was in session. They contemptuously refused to attend the Parliament and make a statement on the floor of the House. The united opposition relentlessly demanded a statement from the Home Minister, resulting in a ruckus in both Houses of Parliament, giving rise to acrimony and disorder.

The Presiding Officers made no effort to persuade the Home Minister to respond to the opposition’s demands. As impartial, neutral umpires and the custodians of the rights of members, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Om Birla and the Chairman of the Council of States (Rajya Sabha), Jagdeep Dhankhar, were duty-bound to defuse the situation by taking a dispassionate view. Instead, they acted in a very partisan manner in connivance with the treasury benches, particularly the Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Prahlad Joshi and the leader of the House in Rajya Sabha, Piyush Goyal. 

They should take a leaf out of Somnath Chatterjee’s book, who defied his party’s whip to vote for the no-confidence motion against the Manmohan Singh government in 2008 on the issue of the nuclear deal with the US and inviting his expulsion from the CPM, rather than compromise his integrity. He demonstrated that the Speaker ceases to be a member of any party and is above party politics. He never suspended a single MP from the House, believing that suspending MPs was not the right step in restoring order to the House. 

In an unprecedented, premeditated move, as evidenced by the proceedings of the Parliament, the Presiding Officers suspended 146 opposition MPs en masse for ‘disruption’ and ‘persistent and willful obstruction’, making the Parliament opposition mukt. There are no parallels to such a move in the world parliamentary history. It is shocking and disgraceful that we call ourselves a ‘mother of democracy.’ Every convention and practice of the Parliament was broken to oust the opposition members from the Parliament so that the government could pass the crucial bills, particularly the three bills relating to criminal laws, with overarching consequences, without any dissent and opposition. It is a travesty of parliamentary democracy.  

The three criminal laws- the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act are replaced by the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bhartiya Sakshya Sanhita, respectively. The opposition’s request not to rush through such important criminal legislation in haste and refer them to the Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee for scrutiny was not accepted. Their suggestion to provide English titles to these bills to benefit non-Hindi-speaking states was rejected outrightly. Former Home Minister P. Chidambaram says these bills are very contentious and complex, having several loopholes. According to him, more than ninety per cent of these new proposed criminal bills are copied and pasted from the original laws. And some provisions in these bills are more draconian. They were passed without discussion and debate, with the empty opposition benches. The amended criminal laws would transform India into a police state.  

In Britain, every Wednesday for an hour, the PM answers impromptu questions from the opposition. In India, the two most powerful men running the country are breaking every parliamentary norm to muzzle the opposition’s voice. To them, ‘it is my way or the highway.’ Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj, as the opposition leaders in Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, claimed that ‘disruption of proceedings ‘is the legitimate right of the opposition to draw government attention. And that is how the BJP, when they were the opposition, blocked parliamentary proceedings for weeks, session after session, during the UPA regime and had their way. They were not thrown out of the Parliament. 

The current regime has mastered the art of distracting from the main issue and making an issue out of a non-issue by resorting to diversionary tactics. For instance, TMC leader Kalyan Banerjee mimicking the Chairman of Rajya Sabha in the parliament complex, where all the suspended MPs assembled to protest, was construed as an insult to his background by Jagdeep Dhankhar invoking his Jat identity. And the Prime Minister, the Speaker and even the President of India, in an unusual reaction, called the mimicry a humiliation of a high constitutional authority. This is a well-orchestrated attempt to present the Vice President as the victim to distract the people’s attention from the issue of the suspension of opposition MPs and its fallout. 

President Droupadi Murmu says she “was dismayed to see the manner in which our respected Vice President was humiliated.” Her selective ‘dismay’ is surprising. Why wasn’t she ‘dismayed’ when Rahul Gandhi and Mahua Moitra were expelled from the Parliament for raising questions on the Adani-Modi nexus without even hearing them? Why wasn’t she ‘dismayed’ when the opposition MPs were ousted en masse from the Parliament, of which she is the Head? This is not to justify the mimicry. There are umpteen instances where the Prime Minister himself mocked and mimicked Sonia Gandhi, Raul Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee and other opposition leaders right in Parliament and at public rallies. This double standard is the root cause of all the evils in the system. 

The media is not interested even in commenting on how the Presiding Officers could exercise the power so ruthlessly and suspend practically all opposition MPs, including the LOPs, for demanding a statement from the Home Minister on the serious security lapse. Rahul Gandhi wants to know: “Why is there no discussion in the media over opposition MPs being thrown out of the House.” And no one in the media is questioning how the ruling party MP facilitated the entry of intruders into the Lok Sabha and why no action was taken against him. The three pillars of democracy, the Parliament, the Judiciary and the Media, have been demolished, paving the way for a dictatorial regime.