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Addressing a press conference earlier this week, lawyer Prashant Bhushan stated that protests over electoral-roll manipulation through the Special Intensive Revision by the Election Commission had become “really a fight for regime change,” and this is a democratic right of citizens. As per Supreme Court observations on sedition, creating “disaffection” against a government is not a crime absent violence or public disorder. Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders, including Rajnath Singh, Nitin Nabin, Sambit Patra and others, alleged that this exposes the opposition’s agenda of street anarchy, Bangladesh-style upheaval, collusion with foreign powers or “a conspiracy to seize power by creating anarchy”.

The ruling BJP’s framing of opposition calls for a “regime change” as anti-national, unconstitutional or a threat to democracy is fundamentally wrong, intellectually dishonest and historically hypocritical.

Demands for regime change are not a violation of democracy, they are its primary purpose.

The BJP is wrong because wanting Modi out is not the same as wanting India destabilised. And it is hypocritical because BJP and RSS leaders openly demanded political change, backed street mobilisation and called for the removal of an elected prime minister when Congress held power. Their own record demolishes their argument.

1. The Modi government is not the Indian Republic

BJP President Nitin Nabin’s claim that the phrase “regime change” exposes an attempt to destabilise India is deliberately conflating three different things into one: the BJP, the union government and the country. They are not interchangeable. A government is merely a temporary administrator chosen by the electorate, whereas the nation is the sovereign entity.

Removing BJP from office merely changes which party governs India. Calling that objective ‘anti-national’ is tantamount to giving Modi and the BJP a proprietary claim over the country. Modi is entitled to hold office constitutionally, but he is not allowed to have a continued stint as the prime minister be decreed as a national-security imperative.

2. The constitution does not guarantee a prime minister an uninterrupted five-year personal tenure

The BJP is essentially arguing that once a party wins an election, its right to rule is absolute and immune from opposition mobilisation until the next election cycle. This is an idea alien to parliamentary democracy. Article 75(3)........

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