What goes around comes around

Aheli Moitra

New Delhi is currently bedecked in posters ‘welcoming’ West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, to the national capital. “Didi, smile to your heart’s content, you are in a democracy,” read a message in Hindi on one of the hoardings that also featured caricatures of her, put up by an organisation called Youth For Democracy, reported the Hindustan Times.


Indeed, it is this democracy that saw the ruling National Democratic Alliance government in the centre unable to pass two contentious Bills in the Rajya Sabha on February 13—the Triple Talaq Bill and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill (CAB). This was because the Bills could not even be introduced on the last day of the Budget Session and are set to lapse on June 3. Legislative procedures state that a Bill pending in the Rajya Sabha which has not been passed by the Lok Sabha does not lapse on dissolution of the Lok Sabha. However, a Bill which is passed by the Lok Sabha and is pending in the Rajya Sabha lapses upon the dissolution of the Lok Sabha. Both the Bills were passed by the Lok Sabha.


If they are to be re-considered for passing, the two Bills will now have to be reintroduced after the 17th Lok Sabha convenes (by June 3) following the general election. For this to happen, the Bharatiya Janata Party will have to come back to power since it has been solely behind the push to pass the said Bills. While civil society groups in the North East have exercised one of their major democratic rights to protest against the passage of the CAB—which which sought to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to make illegal immigrants (Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan) eligible for Indian citizenship—here is another chance for the North East to stand up for the rights of indigenous people that have been elaborated over the past few months during anti-CAB protests by practicing the democratic right to vote.


Meanwhile, Didi must be excited to learn a bit more about how democracy for those in power works. Already in West Bengal, reports suggest, the state government has made life prickly for BJP leaders—Narendra Modi’s rally could not be held at its initially intended venue, Amit Shah was denied proper landing facilities and Yogi Adityanath couldn’t even enter the state, finally having to address a rally over the phone.


But, really, Didi is not going to the heart of a clean federal democracy as claimed by the snarky posters in New Delhi. She is going to the heart of the politics that inspire her gimmicks. In 2018, the BJP-led centre chose to openly challenge the elected AAP government in New Delhi by using the office of the Lt Governor. The law that was used to stifle Naxals, or bring the NSCN (K) on board the peace talks, is now being used to stifle opposition. P Chidambaram and family has already been witness to this. Now that Priyanka Gandhi is a front runner in the Congress bid to challenge the ruling dispensation, all  heat has been turned up on Robert Vadra. Political vendetta as a primary method to tackle opposition remains intact irrespective of the ruling party in India’s centre or its states.


Familiar with what we, the people of India, will witness over the course of this year, Vadra provided the best binoculars and summed up Indian democracy thus: “What goes around comes around.”


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