New DelhiAugust 20, 2025 08:31 PM IST
First published on: Aug 20, 2025 at 08:31 PM IST
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Proceedings in the Lok Sabha were marked by chaos Wednesday, with members of the ruling and Opposition alliances jostling with each other as Union Home Minister Amit Shah introduced three Bills with provisions for the removal of Prime Minister, Chief Ministers and ministers arrested on serious criminal charges. Congress Rajya Sabha MP and senior lawyer Abhishek Singhvi, who headed the Parliamentary Committees of Law, Home and Commerce earlier, speaks to The Indian Express on why the Opposition is objecting to the Bills. Excerpts:
* The Bills mandate the removal of a Central or state minister who has been in jail for at least 30 days on allegations of corruption or serious offences. What are your objections?
This is quite an extraordinary enactment and appears to have ulterior motives. Firstly, it relies upon an Executive act which is completely uncertain and arbitrary – namely arrest – to change the will of the people with respect to an elected minister, CM or PM. There is no Legislative determination of the act of arrest, and it is left to the whims and caprice of Executive authorities and biased agencies. One such act… will have disastrous consequences for democracy…
Secondly, there is complete lack of synchronization because the Legislature already prescribes how and when elected representatives should be disqualified. The Representation of the People Act puts a definite act of conviction as the standard criterion… There is a large element of judicial adjudication involved in any such conviction, which then triggers disqualification.
In the proposed enactment, the mere act of a police officer either acting wrongly or acting in a biased manner (frequently under instructions from his political masters) generates very serious consequences for elected representatives.
* But won’t the legislation apply to all?
While superficially the amendments seem balanced and non-discriminatory, they are actually biased and one-sided even in their concept and design. It is inconceivable that the police force or the feared CBI, Enforcement Directorate and other similar agencies will act in any such manner when it comes to a ruling party minister or PM…
It is clearly intended as the worst form of destabilisation of elected governments, and only of Opposition… You simply need to arrest an individual or collectivity of ministers or indeed the CM, with no determination of guilt, no framing of charges, not even the filing of a chargesheet, and disastrous consequences for an Opposition government can be created – patently contrary to the will of those who elected them.
It is also intended as a perfect recipe to encourage and engineer defections… Even without such ridiculous provisions as now proposed, we have seen how governments have been made and unmade by the BJP in several states, and this adds a dangerously potent, additional tool in their hands.
* It can be argued that the removal of a minister after 30 days in detention is reasonable.
The period of 30 days is not only ridiculously low but involves not even the vestige of any adjudicatory process. It is the mere arrest of any minister by anyone. The person may come out on the 45th or the 60th or the 90th day, the arrest may be found to be completely illegal and wrong. It is not enough to say then that the person can be reinstated as minister or CM. The entire destabilisation, chaos and confusion to change the government would already have been achieved.
* Some believe the Bills will run into legal hurdles.
I have no doubt that the Bills would be struck down as unconstitutional and violative of several Articles of the Constitution, including but not limited to Articles 14, 19 and 21. It appears to be a mindless law conceived in haste and delivered with ulterior motives. I hope and trust that the Bills are struck down if at all passed. But I hope that more likely they will not be passed.
* The Opposition has also called the Bills violative of the basic structure of the Constitution and federalism.
They clearly violate the basic structure and federalism. The former because they hit at the root of the mandate of the people through the power of Executive arrest. The latter because they will essentially target only Opposition ministers and CMs… The reference to the PM is laughable. Does anyone in his right senses really believe that the PM of a country will be arrested by agencies of the ruling dispensation? It is insulting to the intelligence of the people… (so as) to give a veneer of equality and non-discrimination.
* What do you think of AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal running the Delhi government from jail as CM?
I agree with it a hundred percent. The Bills turn on their head the presumption of innocence. Arrest for a mere 30 days is no proof of guilt of any kind. We all know of the large number of arbitrary, politically motivated and biased arrests. If the party to which the arrestee belongs or the people of his region do not want the arrestee to be out of power, what business does the police officer have to put him out of power? In a nutshell, this is a fantastic new technique entrusting a police constable with the power to alter and change incumbent governments, incumbent CMs and ministers, but only and always of the Opposition alone.