Listen to this article:

The Narendra Modi government’s defeat over the Constitution Amendment three-Bills package to get new rules for the next round of delimitation and make major changes by inflating Lok Sabha seats to 850 seats minus any safeguards for states that have made the demographic transition has at least nine significant political takeaways.

1. A Lok Sabha defeat hurts the BJP: A defeat in the Lok Sabha – which has been unthinkable for the BJP ever since its remarkable ascent to power in Delhi with 282 seats in 2014 – is significant. The Rajya Sabha has seen pushbacks, and also one opposition amendment to the President’s address being voted in March 2015. The BJP took to terming bills as ‘money bills’ to escape scrutiny, but this is a first in the Lok Sabha, and only the second time this century after 2002, for a government bill like this to be defeated.

2. Modi government’s aura of invincibility hit: The Modi government likes to argue in court and elsewhere, while trying to rework fundamentals of the Constitution via the judiciary, that only parliament represents the ‘will of the people’ and should be treated as supreme, not ‘constitutional values’. This rests on its sense of invincibility, based on its Lok Sabha numbers. This is an aura which Modi has tried hard to switch back on, after the 2024 loss in the Lok Sabha, by swearing in the same cabinet and tightening its grip over institutions meant to otherwise push back on executive overreach and excesses. Last week’s developments have eroded that carefully cultivated aura of the Modi government.

3. Opposition matters: There was a belief that the opposition........

© The Wire