On August 20, India’s Home Minister Amit Shah tabled the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025, amid protests by a unified opposition. In the government’s words, “The purpose of this bill is to elevate the declining standards of morality in public life and bring integrity to politics.”
The Bill empowers the Union government, through the governors in the different states, to sack any minister, including the chief minister, if the person remains in jail for 30 consecutive days.
The government argued that when the Constitution was framed, its architects could not have imagined that in the future, there would be political figures who would refuse to resign on moral grounds before being arrested. “In recent years, an astonishing situation has arisen in the country where Chief Ministers or Ministers have unethically run the government from jail without resigning,” the government said.
It was an unambiguous reference to the case of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party, who ran the government from jail after the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a federal agency investigating financial crimes, held him in connection with an alleged liquor license scam. He, however, resigned after obtaining bail, promising to take up the job only if re-elected. He got bail in September 2024 after 79 days in jail and is yet to be convicted.
What the Modi government did not say is what the opposition parties and civil society organizations are highlighting: there have been concerns over the steady decline in institutional integrity of federal investigating agencies due to the Modi government’s alleged use of these agencies as a political tool to coerce critics and opponents.
Expectedly, the bill is being perceived as a weapon to corner opposition-led state governments. Since most of the BJP’s opponents are individual leader-centric regional forces, any government could be toppled by jailing the chief minister. A strong penal provision may prevent bail within 30 days, irrespective of the merits of the case.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house of the Indian Parliament, accused the government of dragging India back to medieval times, when kings could remove anyone from their positions at their will if they disliked a person.
“The first move of any emerging dictator is to give himself the power to arrest and remove rivals from office. That is exactly what this bill seeks to do,” said M.K. Stalin, chief minister of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, who heads the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party.
Stalin argued that the bill “allows the BJP to foist false cases against political opponents in power across states and remove them by misusing provisions.” He called it “an attempt to defile the Constitution and its democratic foundations by turning India into a dictatorship under the prime minister.”
The amendment also empowers the president of India to sack the prime minister in case s/he has been in jail for 30 consecutive days but, as journalist Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta pointed out, “The possibility of a Union government law enforcement agency arresting the person who controls them and keeping them in jail for 30 days is zero.”
Among the major federal investigating agencies, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) operates under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, a ministry that has always been held by prime ministers or home ministers, with one exception of a deputy prime minister. Currently, Modi holds the portfolio.
Besides, the ED and the Income Tax (IT) department operate under the Ministry of Finance, the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) operates under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, and the National Investigating Agency (NIA) is under the Ministry of Home Affairs. These agencies arresting chief ministers or other ministers of BJP-ruled states or ministers in the Modi Cabinet is almost inconceivable at this point, given their track record.
According to the Indian Express, between 2014 and September 2022, as many as 121 prominent leaders came under the ED’s radar, and 115 of them belonged to opposition parties. In 2023, 14 opposition parties moved the Supreme Court of India against the “misuse” of federal agencies, but without any relief.
Two opposition chief ministers — Kejriwal and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) — were jailed by federal agencies on corruption charges in 2024. But charges against BJP chief ministers are ignored.
Between 2014 and 2024, as many as 25 opposition leaders facing corruption probes switched over to the BJP, and 23 of them got a reprieve. This new trend of opposition leaders facing federal agency probes finding relief after joining the BJP birthed the new coinage of “washing machine politics,” which helps one become “clean” after joining the BJP.
Given this context, it’s no surprise that Trinamool Congress (TMC) helmswoman Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of the eastern state of West Bengal, described the new bill as “nothing short of a Hitlerian assault on the very soul of Indian democracy,” a “step to end the democratic era of India forever,” and sounding the “death knell for democracy and federalism in India.”
Southern state Kerala’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan held the bill as “a blatant attack on federalism and the rights of states,” as it “seeks to destabilize non-BJP governments by weaponizing central agencies, jailing opponents on false charges, and disqualifying them.”
Stalin also warned junior partners in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that this bill carries a message for them: “stick with [the BJP] or else…”
It’s a “sinister attempt to intimidate regional parties in the NDA whose leaders are CMs or ministers in various states,” said Stalin in an apparent message to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United), and the BJP’s allies in the Maharashtra government.
Following protests in the Parliament on Wednesday, the government sent the bill to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for scrutiny. Given that the government lacks a two-thirds majority, the chances of its passage are thin. It has prompted some opposition politicians to allege that the bill has been introduced at this point only to divert attention from other issues troubling the Modi government.
As Congress parliamentarian Gaurav Gogoi pointed out, the bill is “nothing but a desperate attempt to divert the attention of the public away from” the Gandhi-led Voter Adhikar Rally (rally for electoral rights) currently happening in the poll-bound state of Bihar to protest the Election Commission of India’s alleged pro-BJP bias.
According to senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, the bill “creates a kill switch for regime change,” where “a lock-up [of a chief minister], not the ballot, becomes the means of dislodging governments.” In a democracy with politicized police forces, the line between prosecution and persecution is thin, and with this bill, the line between law enforcement and political engineering would blur beyond recognition, he said.
“A timely arrest engineered a month before polling could decapitate the party, leaving it rudderless. In volatile electoral politics, the removal of an incumbent leader could swing the result,” he wrote.