Shikha Mukerjee | Modi, Shah In a Fix: How To Tackle Opp. Challenge

If not totally eclipsed then emphatically partially so, the BJP and its twin helmsmen, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, chose to take cover inside their parliamentary offices for almost the entire 19 sittings, from July 20 to August 13, of Parliament’s Monsoon Session, which was adjourned sine die on Thursday. The Opposition, as a collective, achieved the hitherto unthinkable: it forced the Prime Minister and home minister to remain absent and run the government’s legislative business by proxy, because showing up inside the House was so daunting.

It has opened them up to charges, that alas, stick rather stubbornly to their reputations, that by “running away”, the two top leaders exposed themselves as disrespectful and contemptuous of Parliament. It also felt they were afraid, effectively confirming Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s jibe that Mr Shah was behaving like a coward.

Asking the home minister to explain who ordered the use of pellets against the protesters at Jantar Mantar is an entirely legitimate question and the responsibility of the Opposition. If the home minister chose not to explain to the Opposition inside the House, it doesn’t mean he is not accountable. Nor does it mean he doesn’t have to explain why pellet guns were used. He must, because that is his job.

By refusing to respond to the request by vice-president C.P. Radhakrishnan, Rajya Sabha Chairman, for Mr Shah to come and speak for himself, on August 6, on the issues raised by the Opposition on the violence against students outraged by repeated Neet paper leaks, Mr Shah made it clear he doesn’t hold himself accountable to Parliament. While one hopes this is a temporary, though disgraceful, act of contempt of the prestige and honour of the House and the vice-president, the home minister has shown zero regret over not attending the sessions from the front bench allotted to him, nor has he apologised for his wilful absence.

By barricading themselves inside their offices, the PM and home minister may have avoided facing the Opposition, but it doesn’t take away from fundamentals of democratic government that they are accountable to the House, to which they were elected as representatives of the people. The key identity of the two ministers are that they are temporary holders of office and were elected as MPs. Their ministerial positions are jobs that they get paid to do.

Going into seclusion and issuing statements to selective media channels is not what the country pays them to do. Nor does the country pay them to run the legislative side of government by proxy, delegating responsibility for steering bills like the change in Kerala’s name to Keralam, the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill and the National Cooperative Development Corporation (Amendment) Bill to junior ministers, even when Mr Shah was “whole day, from morning till late night, in Parliament”.

The credibility of the Prime Minister and home minister were staked by Mr Modi and Mr Shah to fulfil a possibly egotistical goal. There is reason for speculating that the goal of keeping out of sight and missing from the benches was egotistical. The home minister through his proxy, the hapless parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijuju, declared he would attend the House and listen to the Opposition on condition that the Opposition pleaded on bended knees that he should do so. In his strange letter to the Speaker, who is incidentally his senior in terms of protocol, Mr Shah directed Om Birla to talk to the Opposition and fix a time for a debate on student protests, offering to be present in the Lok Sabha for as long as it takes.

Mr Shah ought not to have been disrespectful of the Chair in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. As a member of the Lok Sabha, Mr Shah ought to have remembered that he can enter and participate in the proceedings as and when necessary, or he thinks is necessary. He is answerable inside and outside the precincts within which he had secreted himself.

The confrontation between the Opposition and the government was about the fundamental right to protest and to do so without being subjected to the extremes of violence by the State, at the directions of the political executive. Saying sorry for unleashing the violence of the State machinery would have served Mr Modi better. Mr Gandhi, by advising him to do so, was offering him a lifeline; by not grabbing it, Mr Modi made a mistake. India’s youth understand the tactics of their elders to control their actions.

It is a rare occasion when the Opposition has remained collectively committed to demanding answers from a government that has rarely done the wholesome thing of coming clean on its actions. It serves as a reminder that the Opposition, mainly the parties that constitute the INDIA bloc, represent 40.6 per cent of voters who participated in the 2024 general election, as against 42.5 per cent who supported the National Democratic Alliance, of which the BJP got 37 per cent.

It must also be recalled that according to survey reports by the esteemed Lokniti-CSDS, in 2021 only 27 per cent of voters fully trusted Parliament, a serious decline from the 49 per cent gullible voters in 2005. The trust deficit noted by the survey is a no-confidence verdict in the political establishment as truly representative of people’s aspirations, expectations and discontents. Neither the ruling side nor the Opposition is expected by voters to fix the “system” that leaks examination papers and sells them, or delivers justice or opts out of using the State’s enormous resources in unleashing violence against protesters, demonstrators, aggrieved and discontented people.

Mr Modi has botched the biggest political challenge to his leadership by mistaking the Opposition in Parliament as the principal dissenter; young people and their networks of influenced are his critics and dissenters. Neither his experience nor the BJP’s playbook prepared him and Mr Shah for this converge of the Opposition and dissenting forces. Having been eclipsed, what next will Mr Modi do?

He has lost out on steering the contentious FCRA bill successfully; that has been consigned to the deep freeze. He has also lost out on the even more controversial delimitation bill that the BJP-RSS had desired. The double disappearing act by Mr Modi and Mr Shah mean the Ram Temple donation theft issue will bug them and the BJP through the months before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election due in 2027.

Recovering the initiative will test the sills of Mr Modi and Mr Shah, having successfully boxed themselves in a tight corner.