In 2003, the BJP felt that popular support was slipping, and thought of amendments to the Constitution to make their hold more secure. Luckily, nothing came of the amendments. This column was published in Business Standard of 29 April 2003.
MAKING DEMOCRACY SAFE FOR THEMSELVES
The central cabinet has proposed three amendments to the
Constitution. The first would overturn the amendment passed under Rajiv Gandhi,
under which a member of Parliament or a legislature forfeits his seat if he
defies the party whip, unless the defiance comes collectively from a group
which has at least one third the strength of the party. Instead, it proposes
that the member would forfeit his seat under all circumstances.
The second amendment would restrict
the number of ministers to a tenth of the strength of the legislature or seven,
whichever is higher. It is not clear whether the strength referred to is the
strength of both houses together, where they exist, or only one; just now it
looks as if it will be the strength of the lower house.
Under the third amendment,
assembly seats would be delimited using the population figures from the 2001
census.
All three amendments are
political dirty tricks. First, the amendment that would ban defections. It is really
proposed to keep the BJP from shrinking into insignificance – of suffering the
fate of the Congress – in UP. For UP today has a chief minister who proudly
exhibits a shameless lack of scruples. She has been recorded as telling her
MLAs to give a commission to her party from the bribes they would accumulate
out of projects financed in their constituencies out of their budgeted quota.
For exposing her, she has filed criminal cases against the leaders of the
Socialist Party and set the stage for their imprisonment.
She has once before been in
coalition with the BJP. At that time she had made a pact with the BJP that she
would be chief minister for six months, and then give over the chief
ministership to the BJP for six months. She reigned as chief minister for six
months in which she made umpteen transfers for consideration that can be
imagined, and then broke the pact and the government. The BJP leaders would
have to be advanced amnesiacs to trust her an inch. Still, they have forced the
state BJP into a coalition with the BSP to share in the loaves and fishes of
power.
But in the intervening five
years, Mayawati has gained in ambition and guile. She broke the Congress
legislature party and lured away half its MLAs by offering them four seats in
the ministry; just to underscore the signal that she is arbitrary and hence
powerful, she left out the dissidents’ leader in the cold. She is in danger of
losing the support of Muslims to the SP because of her cohabitation with the
BJP. To prevent that, she has tried to put the leaders of the SP in jail.
Although she was elected almost a year ago, she has called the assembly to
session only once – when a cooperative speaker declared a vote in her favour
without any vote having taken place. Even her most sympathetic observers must
wonder: would she stop at anything? If they are in the BJP, they will wonder,
will she hesitate to do to the BJP what she did to the Congress – lure away its
MLAs, and then throw it away like an empty plastic bottle out of the coalition?
It is that thought, that fear,
that has prompted the NDA cabinet to propose that anyone who votes against the
party whip must lose his seat. Earlier, the BJP had shown much enthusiasm for a
section in the German Constitution under which a government, even if defeated
on the floor of the house, does not have to resign unless an alternative
government is voted in. Then, when Mayawati showed her colours, the BJP lost
its enthusiasm for this provision: if she chose to break the government by
unmentionable means, she would arrange well in time to put another government
in place.
It is ironic that an amendment to
limit the size of ministries should come from a Prime Minister who created the
largest ever cabinet in independent India’s history. Why he did so is well known:
he wanted to reward as many footling parties as possible so that he could
cobble together a majority. Just what Mayawati did when she gave what she felt
was disproportionate representation to the BJP in an equally oversized UP
cabinet. When it suits the BJP, it would put every MP or MLA supporter into the
cabinet to form the government. And it does not have to do that. Narendra Modi
has put a number of his MLA supporters into chairmanships of state corporations
with ministerial status. That gives them a car, a house and chaprasis, as well
as an empire to lord over. And those positions, which are ministerial in
everything except in name, would be untouched by the amendment proposed by the
NDA cabinet. These politicians are clever. Or they think the electorate is
stupid.
And the amendment to delimit
assembly constituencies on the basis of the 2001 census is in reality an
amendment to delimit them on the basis of the 1971 census. For that census is
the basis of the present constituencies; the results of the 2001 census will
not be out till the end of this year, so all the state elections this year will
be held on the basis of the 1971 election. Why? Because constituencies that
have been the strongholds of BJP leaders in Delhi for decades will be redrawn
and become marginal. That much is known; the leaders pointed it out to their
central leaders. What is not certain, but likely, is that the BJP would get
fewer seats in the assembly elections if the boundaries were withdrawn.
But this is nothing compared to a
constitutional amendment this government has already got passed: right till the
2036 elections, parliamentary constituencies will remain the same, delimited on
the basis of the 1971 elections. Why? Most leaders cultivate a constituency:
the Gandhi family cultivated Phulpur and later Amethi, Vajpayee, a true
backwoodsman from Madhya Pradesh, has cultivated Lucknow, and Advani, who does
not know a word of Gujarati, is in the process of creating a fortress in
Gandhinagar. They like the electorate they have cultivated to remain unchanged
from election to election. They do not like redrawing of constituency
boundaries. So the demographic changes in sixty years will not be reflected in
election results till 2036.
I once went to see an ex-Prime
Minister in Jamaica. He made me wait, because he was anxiously listening to the
radio: there had been a gunfight between his followers and the police in his
constituency. What they do over there is to recruit an armed gang; it throws
out from a constituency all opponents of the politician – turns it into a
garrison. Over here, we do it by “constitutional” means. But the impulse is the
same: politicians want to make India safe for themselves, even if they make it
unsafe for democracy thereby. They will try their worst to stick on to power –
all we can do is to throw them out at the first opportunity. The Jamaicans
almost never vote a party back into power.
