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The just-ended monsoon session had several firsts. Here was an entire session in which the prime minister and his second-in-command, home minister Amit Shah, remained absent. They finally made a ceremonial appearance just before parliament was adjourned sine die, for ‘Vande Mataram’ played in full.

All questions relating to the home ministry were handled by the junior ministers. Since 2014, Modi had rarely followed parliamentary traditions such as attending the question hour or debates on important issues in the House. But it is something new for Shah to keep away from parliament for an entire session.

Why did the two boycott parliament proceedings? Against what? Does it have a precedent? There have been occasions when the prime minister was prevented by the opposition from speaking. But, this time, the refusal to join the house proceedings appears to have been to avoid pointed questions by the opposition on the police excesses against the youth protesters at Jantar Mantar.

For ten days, Rijiju told parliament and the press that the home minister would come and reply to all questions. But he never came. On August 11, the list of business mentioned Shah himself would move a Bill to rename Kerala. But that did not happen.

Ironically, this happened when the NDA has reached almost two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha. After a series of splits in the Aam Aadmi Party, Trinamool Congress and Shiv Sena came hopes of support from the Akali Dal and, possibly, Sharad Pawar.

The Modi regime appeared confident at last that its contentious Bills such as for delimitation, the Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill (a.k.a. the PM-CM removal Bill), the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill and maybe even a proposal to push simultaneous polls across the country. It may have hoped that a considerably weakened opposition would fail to stop its onward march towards permanent and decisive authoritarian power.

But the whole plan collapsed when the two refused to attend the session. We do not know why this flip-flop happened. Was it the vainglory of the second man that superseded the more vital objective of more absolute power?

There were indications at the time that the DMK was amenable to a proposal from Shah for a “proportional increase” in each state’s share of seats in parliament under the........

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