Prayagraj: Senior Congress leader, Shekhar Bahuguna held a press conference on Tuesday, which coincided with last day of Vote Adhikar Yatra led by Grand Old Party to safeguard democracy. Speaking to reporters, Bahuguna claimed that for 11 years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah have been nibbling away at the laws that have safeguarded the fundamental freedoms – of thought, speech and action – that were till a decade ago the pillars of our democracy. Today, that democracy is an emaciated skeleton of its former self, but Modi’s thirst for more, and more, and still more power has still not been slaked. On August 20, Shah introduced a Constitution (Amendment) Bill in Parliament (the 130th since 1950) that, if passed, will allow for the dismissal of any Union or state minister, even a prime minister or chief minister, after he or she has been in jail for 30 days upon being accused of crimes punishable by five or more years in prison.

That will allow Modi to become the absolute ruler of India in much the same way as the Enabling Act of 1933 turned Hitler into Germany’s chancellor for life, and ended democracy in Germany. The astonished fury of the entire opposition is therefore understandable. But how do Shah and Modi hope to get such a draconian constitutional amendment through two houses of parliament in which, neither by themselves nor with the support of their allies, do they command anywhere near a two-thirds majority? Can they even rely on the continued support of Nitish Kumar and Chandrababu Naidu for a Bill of which, as they must know, they could easily become the future victims?

Modi and Shah must know that they cannot. So the only purpose of the proposed amendment can be to draw a red herring across the trail of the political system to distract it from the mounting evidence that the BJP might have indulged in vote-stealing on a large scale, and cannot therefore be trusted to rule the country any more. Ever since the BJP came close to losing the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Modi’s government has stooped lower and lower to ensure that he and his close associates never lose power and become answerable for the crimes they have been accused of committing over the last 23 years.

The route they have chosen is to first stifle, and then destroy, India’s democracy. They have spent the last 11 years doing this, step by step, to the human rights and civic freedoms that the Indian Constitution had guaranteed to every citizen of India.

In the face of the torrent of suspicion and distrust that the EC’s reactions have provoked, it is essential to ask why its responses have been solely those of aggression. Is it not meant to serve the people rather than ride roughshod over them? And should Indians, in particular members of parliament who are their elected representatives, not have the right to question the findings and decisions of administrative bodies that have been created to serve them?

The only beacon of light in this gathering, all-enveloping gloom is the Supreme Court’s order that those struck off the draft rolls can submit their Aadhaar card while petitioning for re-inclusion into it. Had this not been mandated by the court, it is not hard to surmise which segments of the people could have lost their vote.

These would have been the poorest of the poor, who cannot produce even birth certificates, and migrant workers. Even today, the youngest eligible voters have a birth registration rate of 26.2%. As for migrant workers, the EC has chosen the precise month – July – when their employment, whether in farmers’ fields or on construction sites, is at its peak. Had the Supreme Court not stepped in, lakhs of voters could have been one step closer to losing their right to vote. It is not difficult to surmise which political party would have suffered the most. The answer is obvious: it would have been Tejashwi Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal.