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Things the Opposition said to Amit Shah's 'Black Bill'

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21st August, 2025 00:06 IST

On home minister Amit Shah's 103rd Constitutional Amendment Bill for the removal of the PM, CMs and other union or state ministers held on serious criminal charges for over 30 days, Trinamool Congress national general secretary and MP Abhishek Banerjee told the media, "I want all of you to understand that this Bill will not be passed in this lifetime... The government is only trying to divert attention from the [Bihar] SIR."

"So call it a gimmick, a conspiracy on the part of the government under which it is trying to show that 'we want to maintain accountability, and in that there is also the prime minister and the home minister'... [But] those who have joined the BJP in the last 10 years, against whom allegations of thousands, crores of rupees were made, not even a single summons was sent to them in 2–4 years," he noted.

As for his party's vote on the bill, Banerjee suggested at a press conference on 20 August, Wednesday, in the evening: "We will be the first to support the bills. In fact, we urge the government to reduce the jail term of ministers from 30 days to 15 days, as proposed. But the government must add the clause that if the persecuted minister is not proven guilty on the 16th day, then the investigating officers of the agency concerned and its top bosses will have to go to jail for double the time they hold the leader in jail in the name of conducting a probe."

Other Trinamool leaders such as West Bengal CM and party chief Mamata Banerjee herself, as well as MPs Mahua Moitra, Sagarika Ghose and Derek O'Brien also weighed in with contempt and derision for the intent of the 'anti-corruption' Bill, as it has been touted.

‘Death knell for India’s democracy’: Mamata on 130th Constitution Amendment Bill

For once, the Trinamool and its traditional rival, the CPI(M), were on the same page, with John Brittas posting to say, "The new bill by union home minister Shri Amit Shah, purportedly in the name of 'public interest, welfare and good governance', is, in reality, draconian and designed to destabilise Opposition-led state governments while undermining India’s federal structure."

“In an era marked by vindictive politics, where central agencies are ideployed against opposition leaders, the provisions will be misused for ulterior motives," Brittas continued. "The bill’s reference to 'Constitutional morality' contradicts its spirit, as it deviates from the established principle that disqualification and punishment should be tied to convictions by courts, not merely charges or arrests. This principle is clearly enshrined in Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act (RPA)."

"In today’s pernicious political climate, where individuals can be easily charged, arrested, and detained for extended periods, this legislation will be weaponiszed to target political opponents and erode democratic norms," he predicted, sharing images of its various clauses.

Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK leader M.K. Stalin too expressed his condemnation of the proposed Bill in the strongest terms. Posting on X, he said, "The 130th Constitutional Amendment is not reform — this is a Black Day and this is a Black Bill.

"30-day arrest = Removal of an elected CM.

"No trial, no conviction — just BJP’s DIKTAT.

"This is how DICTATORSHIPS begin: Steal votes, Silence rivals and Crush states."

Saying that the Bill "strikes at the very roots of democracy" — a sentiment shared by the West Bengal CM as well — Stalin said, "I call upon all the democratic forces to unite against this attempt to turn India into a dictatorship."

Noting that this was a time when the very mandate of the present central government is in doubt amid 'Vote chori' allegations from various parts of the country, Stalin continued, "Having stolen the mandate of the people through fraud, the BJP is now desperate to distract public attention from this exposé. To do that, they have brought in the #130thConstitutionalAmendmentBill."

"The plan of this Bill is clear. It allows the BJP to foist false cases against political opponents in power across states and remove them by misusing provisions that treat even a 30-day arrest as a ground for removal of an elected leader, without any conviction or trial," the CM said, but at least on one point, he seemed to differ with his political allies. He felt the Bill could not actually get away with this intent, because the courts are bound to strike it down.

Stalin also took an apparent dig at BJP-allied regional parties, as he wrote: "This is a sinister attempt to intimidate regional parties in the NDA, whose leaders are CMs or ministers in various states — 'stick with us or else…'" He named no names, choosing circumspection, but to many, the faces of his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) did immediately suggest themselves.

Bill to remove PM, CM, other ministers a distraction from SIR and #VoteChori

"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," Stalin concluded.

Others pointed to the inconsistency of the BJP’s own position on this matter of corruption. Congress' K.C. Venugopal was one of the foremost to speak on this, but he wasn't alone, of course.

Speaking in Parliament, the Samajwadi Party's Dharmendra Yadav taunted the BJP leadership, saying, "The BJP talks about morality but Ajit Pawar is deputy CM [of Maharashtra], whom they were mocking with 'chakki peesing' in a corruption case."

Earlier, opposing the Bill in Parliament, Congress MP K.C. Venugopal had brought up the situation where home minister Amit Shah had himself gone absconding while facing serious charges as state minister of Gujarat.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, however, Rahul Gandhi disdained any whataboutery and simply said, "We are going back to medieval times when the king could just remove anybody at his will, or if he didn't like someone's face, he could get the ED to get them arrested, and a democratically elected person can be thrown out within 30 days."

The very concept of an 'elected' public servant was at stake, he suggested at a gathering for the Opposition to felicitate their new vice-presidential nominee Justice D. Sudershan Reddy.

Rajya Sabha LoP and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, for his part, spelt out the exact danger he foresaw from all three Bills the home minister tabled today in detail, saying, "Over the last 11 years, we have witnessed the blatant misuse of parliamentary majority to arm the autonomous agencies like ED, IT, and CBI with draconian powers to target opposition leaders.

"Now, these new Bills are set to become instruments in the hands of the ruling party to further undermine and destabilise democratically elected governments in the states."

Outside Parliament, Congress MP from Telangana Mallu Ravi told the press, "The bill has been introduced with the intention of disqualifying the Opposition. We all opposed it, but still the home minister insisted on introducing it. We believe this is anti-democracy and unconstitutional.”

Trinamool MP Sagarika Ghose labelled it firmly as a "BAD law [with] BAD intentions" — for, she said, it was "nothing but a weapon to topple democratically elected Opposition governments ".

Echoing party supreme Mamata Banerjee as well as Stalin on the other side, her spitfire Trinamool colleague Mahua Moitra said, "Today is one of the darkest days in Indian democracy... This is extremely dangerous, we are in a state of super-Emergency."

While the Trinamool MPs spoked outside Parliament to the press, AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi weighed in on the Bill within, saying, "The government is turning India into a police state. This is a direct assault on the separation of powers and representative democracy."

For a change, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan responded along similar lines to neighbour Stalin, to say this Bill was the ruling party’s new “tactic to hunt down” non-BJP governments in the country.

It can only be seen as part of the political decision of the union government to "destabilise" non-BJP state governments, he held, telling the media, “This is a continuation of the politics of vendetta and trapping of political opponents using central investigative agencies.”

He said there had already been a move by the Centre to destabilise state governments by using central agencies as weapons. “As part of this, the chief ministers and ministers of opposition parties who hold constitutional responsibilities in the country are being targeted,” Vijayan said.

Many chief ministers and ministers who were framed on false charges had been imprisoned in the past, Vijayan claimed. “But the frustration over their refusal to resign was behind the hasty introduction of the 130th Constitutional Amendment, he said.

The BJP is trying a new experiment of ‘neo-fascist’ politics — imprisoning opponents in false cases and then disqualifying them based on these cases, Vijayan charged.

He added that the BJP also needs to explain the strange logic that those arrested in corruption cases became saints if they switched parties and joined the BJP.

According to Vijayan, the new moves to destabilise state governments are a continuation of the Centre’s efforts to take away the constitutional rights of states and establish once and for all that governors have veto power over the legislature.

Likewise flaying the Narendra Modi government for this Bill, CPI(M) general secretary M.A. Baby said, "The Modi government's three bills to oust PM, CMs, ministers after 30 days in custody exposes its neo-fascist characteristics. This direct assault on our democracy will be opposed by CPI(M) tooth and nail. We urge all democratic forces to unite against this draconian move."

"These bills, cloaked as tackling crime in high office, reveal their true intent, given the RSS-controlled Modi govt's history of undermining elected state governments," he added. 

CPI(ML) Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya agreed that all three bills together will sound the "death knell" for federalism.   

"Viewed together with the ongoing systematic subversion of the electoral system starting with the appointment of election commissioners to the relentless push for the 'one nation, one election (ONOE)' system, this amendment will sound the death knell for federalism and parliamentary democracy in India," Bhattacharya said.

"Every state government opposed to the BJP's politics and policies will henceforth be rendered permanently destabilised and dysfunctional. Every NDA ally will be on tenterhooks to fall in line with the BJP," his statement continued. 

"The weaponisation of central agencies like ED, CBI, I-T, NIA and the abuse of the Constitutional office of governors in narrow partisan interest, a trend which has been seriously condemned on several occasions even by the Supreme Court, will now gain legal validity with the enactment of this bill," he added. 

These views had popular support too. One netizen dredged up a PTI interview with AAP supremo — and then-chief minister of Delhi — Arvind Kejriwal, who explained that he did not wish to resign despite the charges brought against him because if he did, 'tomorrow' the BJP would try to unseat another chief minister with the same stratagem.

"And now they're bringing [a] bill for it," the citizen posted.

In similar circumstances, Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren did step down and hand over his government to Champai Soren — a move many said at the time would only embolden the BJP-led Centre.

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