Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra delivered a powerful speech in the Lok Sabha, accusing the BJP-led government of systematically undermining India's Constitution. She called out the BJP for eroding judicial independence, engaging in electoral malpractices, and passing discriminatory laws like the Citizenship Amendment Act. Moitra's remarks highlighted growing concerns over the state of democracy in India and the impact of such actions on the nation's future. Watch her fiery speech and her bold claims against the ruling party.
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00:00Thank you Madam Chairperson, at the onset I have 18 minutes of allotted time by my party.
00:10Honourable Chairperson Sir, Madam, I stand today on behalf of my party, the All India
00:16Trinamool Congress, to speak on the 75th anniversary of our Constitution.
00:21A Constitution that is not merely a book, but indeed the life and the soul of our nation.
00:28Just 75 years ago to the day, on the 25th of November 1949, Babasaheb Ambedkar reminded
00:35us, we must observe the caution which John Stuart Mill has given to all who are interested
00:40in the maintenance of democracy, namely, not to lay their liberties at the foot of even
00:46a great man, or to trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions.
00:52This nation was made by great men and women, but the real challenge before us today is
00:57ensuring that no one man should believe he is greater than the nation, and that he is
01:02above the principles of the Constitution.
01:03Today as I stand to participate in this historic debate, let me start with a short, yet very
01:11apt, Nazam by the poet Dr Hilal Pareed.
01:14I trust the truth and the irony in his words will not be lost on anyone.
01:18Mubarak ghari hai, kal saj dhach kar, make up rach kar, khoob jach kar, dekho uska manch
01:26par aana, kitab samvidhan ki aankhon se lagana aur parmana, main sheesh ko jhukakar, is kitab
01:34ko mann mein basakar, ishwar ki shapat leta hun, raat ghar ne deejiye, dil badar ne deejiye,
01:41kal talak yeh bewafa, sitamgaron ka baadshah, sab bhool jaayega, nafrate ugaayega, toodiya
01:48parhaayega, roj samvidhan ki dhajiya udaayega, magar jo aaj mehfil saji hai, yahi maanti hai
01:57ki hero wahi hai, mubarak ghari hai.
02:01For the past 10 years, a very large number of people in this country have felt that samvidhan
02:07khatre mein hai.
02:08Our constitution is in danger.
02:10As responsible public representatives, it is imperative that we actually put this to
02:16the test and check if this is just fear-mongering by us, as the ruling party would have us believe,
02:22or indeed is the constitution framework imperiled.
02:26As Professor Tarun Khaitan explains, there are three broad tests to check if the political
02:32executive is constitutionally accountable, three checks for the country to remain democratic
02:38over time.
02:39So let's see how our country is faring on these three checks.
02:42The first is direct electoral accountability to the people.
02:46The second, there is accountability to the judiciary and other fourth branch institutions.
02:51And third, there is accountability rendered by the media and civil society as watchdogs
02:57of the citizenry at large.
03:00The ruling party has the right to influence policies over a large range of matters.
03:04You cannot take away that prerogative, but it cannot use our power in a way that kills
03:08constitutional rights for the rest of us.
03:11This government, this ruling party, when confronted with this charge, uses only one defence.
03:16What about Mrs Gandhi's emergency?
03:18Yes, that was a full-frontal attack on democracy, no question about that.
03:23But we saw it for what it was.
03:26This government's modus operandi has been indirect and creeping, an incremental systemic
03:31assault for the past ten years.
03:34The Modi government has consistently sought to erase the distinction between the party
03:38and the state by undermining and capturing all the mechanisms that seek executive accountability.
03:44It is killing our constitution by a thousand cuts.
03:47I'm going to point out a few of the particularly bloody cuts.
03:51In the first test, democracies seek electoral accountability from the political executive.
03:58Measures such as electoral manipulation, voter disenfranchisement, biased campaign finance
04:02over time give the ruling party an unfair advantage.
04:06Voter disenfranchisement has reached epic proportions in India.
04:10In the past general elections, as well as in the recent by-polls in many BJP-ruled states,
04:15there were widespread documented, caught on television cameras, caught on mobile phones,
04:21instances of voter suppression, from names missing to electoral rolls, by police, used
04:26to threaten, beat and intimidate voters.
04:30We saw it in Rampur.
04:31We saw it in Sambal.
04:33Entire localities were being forced to stay home.
04:37Another aspect is the largely targeted exclusion of a hated minority by a prejudiced majoritarian
04:43state, creating a whole section of second-class citizens whose rights are less equal than
04:48others.
04:49This government brought in a discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act that is openly violative
04:54of the fundamental right to equality before law.
04:57All the BJP state governments are competing with each other in bulldozer justice, demolishing
05:02homes, usually of minorities, without due process of law.
05:06I had to go to the Supreme Court to get a stay on the unconstitutional order of the
05:12UP government demanding that Muslims put identifying markers on their eateries and shops during
05:18the Kavad Yatra.
05:19This is blatantly violative of Article 15.
05:23Let us move on to campaign finance now.
05:25In 2014, both the BJP and the Congress were held liable for illegally accepting foreign
05:31contributions.
05:32In response, this government retrospectively amended the Foreign Contribution Regulatory
05:37Act 2010 to narrow the definition of a foreign company and thereby remove the illegality
05:44with retrospective effect.
05:46This was done surreptitiously.
05:47The Act of 2010 was not amended by a separate bill.
05:52It was done via clauses slipped into the Finance Act 2016 and the Finance Act 2018.
05:58The amendments not only legalised foreign funding of political parties, they also created
06:02a new funding vehicle called electoral bonds.
06:06In 2017-18, the BJP got 97.7% of funds that were legalised by surreptitious changes to
06:14the campaign finance laws.
06:15When the electoral bond numbers came out earlier this year, we saw that the BJP had between
06:2154% and 57% of the total amount raised in the past six years.
06:26This kind of unfair advantage for the BJP in campaign finance has created a very skewed
06:31playing field for the opposition in recent years.
06:35The use of the government funds to promote the BJP and to promote Modi ji's political
06:39branding in the run-up to the elections, Modi ji ki guarantee, Modi ji ka parivaar, creates
06:44a media blitzkrieg that few smaller parties can match.
06:48For a free and fair electoral process, a neutral referee is necessary.
06:54So in addition to electoral accountability, our constitution lays down a second check
06:58of institutional accountability, where the government is scrutinised by the judiciary
07:03and by various fourth-branch institutions, such as the Election Commission, the Vigilance
07:08Commission, a human rights watchdog, an anti-corruption body.
07:12The appointment mechanism of these fourth-branch institutions, along with their functional autonomy,
07:19is what keeps them independent.
07:22What has this government done?
07:23This government willfully defied the spirit of the Supreme Court ruling on the Election
07:27Commission's independence by replacing the Chief Justice of India on this election committee
07:31with a government-appointed minister.
07:33So you have a two-to-one majority.
07:36Prior to Modi ji becoming Prime Minister, how often did we hear of an election commissioner
07:40not filling their full term?
07:41Since this government has come in, two election commissioners have inexplicably quit before
07:45their terms have ended.
07:47The 2024 elections saw egregious violations of the model code of conduct by the BJP, and
07:53specifically by the Prime Minister, which an eager and compliant commission blatantly
07:58ignored.
07:59But even the smallest violation by an opposition party saw the ECI taking prompt, stringent
08:04action.
08:05For free and fair elections, just like justice, must not only be done, but must also be seen
08:11to be done.
08:13So public trust and democracy has to be restored by this election commission.
08:16We have jokingly started calling it the Modi ji code of conduct.
08:20Other institutional bodies have been similarly compromised.
08:24Appointments to the National Human Rights Commission have been widely criticised, especially
08:27of Justice Arun Mishra and others close to the establishment.
08:31This is a judge who, while in office, heaped praise on Modi ji, calling him an international
08:35visionary who thought globally and acted locally.
08:39And lest the Treasury benches claim this assessment is a biased one, please remember, it is precisely
08:45these kinds of appointments that have undermined the independence of the NHRC, so much so
08:50that the NHRC has lost its UN accreditation.
08:53The NHRC can no longer represent India or vote at the UN Council of Human Rights.
08:58Allow me to turn to a simple instance of what human rights under the rule of law means,
09:05the right to bail.
09:06The erstwhile outgoing Chief Justice of India waxed eloquent recently about how the right
09:11to bail has been granted during his tenure for all, a range of undertrials, from A to
09:17Arnab to Z for Zubair.
09:20His alphabet unfortunately seems abbreviated because it did not include G for Gulfisha
09:26Fatima, didn't include H for Hanibabu, didn't include K for Khalid Safi, didn't include
09:32S for Shahjul Imam, and U for Omar Khalid, and countless others.
09:37The former Chief Justice made it a point to say that the Supreme Court is not meant to
09:41act like the political opposition.
09:43We in the political opposition do not need the Supreme Court to do our job.
09:47We are not asking it to.
09:49But what troubles us is that some members of the higher judiciary appear to be doing
09:53their best to compromise the independence and integrity of our constitutional courts.
09:58I do not think that the framers of our constitution ever imagined a scenario where judges would
10:04rely on private conversations with God to write judgments, rather than on objective
10:09logic, on reasoning, and on the law and the constitution.
10:13The Honourable Defence Minister in a speech this morning mentioned the courage of the
10:16late Justice H.R. Khanna to dissent in 1976.
10:20May I remind everyone that Justice Khanna lived for 32 years after 1976 under a largely
10:27Congress regime, long enough to write his autobiography which the Minister quoted from.
10:32Unlike poor Justice Lohia, who is resting in peace long before his time, delays in filling
10:39vacancies in the Central Information Commission is denying citizens their right to information.
10:44Currently, the CIC has only three commissioners, including the Chief, instead of the mandated
10:4910, and has 22,000 pending appeals filed by people against the denial of information by
10:55this government.
10:56The third dimension of executive accountability is discursive accountability.
11:01Citizens in a democracy expect their government to be able to justify their actions by way
11:05of public discourse with civil society.
11:08This government on a daily basis is pursuing unconstitutional methods of restricting freedom
11:12of the press and freedom of speech.
11:15Its ill-conceived amendments to the IT rules to create fact-checking units was recently
11:19struck down by the Bombay High Court as being violative of Articles 14 and 19 of the constitution.
11:25The latest UP police case is against fact-checker Mohammad Zubair, when the UP police is invoking
11:30de facto sedition against a fact-checker who is documenting hate speech.
11:34This is preposterous.
11:36I am one of the petitioners challenging the constitutionality of the sedition law, and
11:40the Supreme Court has very clearly stated that no coercive action will be taken on alleged
11:45sedition cases till the matter is decided.
11:47Yet the government doesn't stop.
11:49The Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita, which the ruling party brought in last year when most of the
11:54parliamentarians were suspended, they said we are dropping sedition, but you also replaced
11:58it with a far more draconian Section 152.
12:01There's also something else which we all need to think about.
12:05The BNS for the first time adds terrorism as a punishable offence and defines it as
12:10an act that intends to threaten the unity, integrity and security.
12:16So the crime of terrorism is no longer anchored in an actual act, it's anchored in an intent
12:22or a thought.
12:23This means that from now onwards, the parents of disappearing Kashmiris or disappearing
12:29Manipuris who are protesting peacefully in a park can be accused of being terrorists.
12:34What they do or do not do in that park while they assemble is besides the point.
12:38As long as a police officer is convinced that they have the intent to do something, they
12:42can be terrorists.
12:43This makes terrorism a thought crime.
12:45Madam Chairperson, this is closer to the letter and spirit of the dystopian reality in George
12:50Orwell's 1984 than it is to the constitution of India.
12:54Let me turn to how the policy of a thousand cuts has damaged our institutions.
12:59Institutions like the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI have turned into extortionist
13:03departments for the government.
13:0414 political parties approached the Supreme Court against the coercive criminal actions
13:09of these two agencies.
13:1095% of cases by these two agencies are against opposition politicians.
13:15Since 2014, 25 opposition leaders facing corruption have crossed over to the BJP, 23 of them have
13:21got reprieves, 3 cases are closed, 20 cases are stalled.
13:25For years, the CBI was used to put pressure on NDTV and its promoters via a bogus case.
13:31Now that the channel has been captured and sanitized, the CBI says there was never any
13:36case to start with.
13:37Airports and large infrastructure have been captured by crony capitalists by similar misuse
13:42of the ED and the CBI.
13:44In a cooked-up case against me, the CBI is wasting precious time and resources looking
13:48for a scarf and lipstick that a friend gifted me.
13:51These actions have caused India the first-ever human rights violation by the Inter-Parliamentary
13:55Union in Geneva, the global body governing all national legislatures.
14:00After the abrogation of Article 370, there has been a flagrant crackdown of the constitutional
14:04rights of the people of Kashmir, free speech and movement have been hampered, passports
14:09cancelled without any pending cases.
14:13Manipur, an integral part of the Union of India, seems to have a complete breakdown
14:17of constitutional machinery.
14:19The failure of governance is stark.
14:21The Union government, under Article 355 of the constitution, is obligated to assist states
14:26in the maintenance of law and order.
14:28In May 2024, in the Supreme Court, Solicitor General stood up and said that violence is
14:32subsiding.
14:33Yet, horrifying incidents are happening every day.
14:36I petitioned the Supreme Court in the Manipur violence case.
14:39Senior Advocate Indira Jai Singh appeared for me.
14:41An expert committee was set up.
14:43But then, after 27 or more hearings, there is no relief, there is no justice yet.
14:48Time constraints do not allow a more in-depth analysis, but it is crystal clear that this
14:53political executive of the past 10 years has systematically eroded democracy.
14:58It fails spectacularly on all three tests of constitutional accountability laid out
15:02by Professor Khaitan.
15:04Our constitution is bleeding from a thousand cuts.
15:07Samvidhan khatre mein zarur hai.
15:09The need of this hour is to ensure that the idea of India survives in its purest form.
15:15This burden is heavier on some of us than on others.
15:19The judiciary and the media have a far greater responsibility in protecting our constitution
15:23than to normal citizens.
15:25The judiciary will not be kind to you, your lads and ladyships, if you falter.
15:29To every Chief Justice of India, past and present, I say this.
15:33Yours is not to worry about your personal legacy.
15:36Yours is not to take directions from God.
15:39Yours is not to have a private family function turned into a televised circus for the political
15:43executive.
15:44The constitution is your only God.
15:48The constitution should be the only atithi who should be in your home as your deva.
15:53Men seeking devas do not leave legacies.
15:56Upholders and protectors of our basic sovereign rights will only be remembered.
16:00To the media, I say, you play a huge role in guaranteeing our democracy's survival.
16:06Live up to it.
16:07To taking a few liberties with Faiz Ahmed Faiz's immortal words, let me tell you, sab
16:12taj uchhale jaayenge, sab takht giraaye jaayenge, bas naam rahega samvidhan ka.
16:18In conclusion, I pay homage to the 17 women of India's constituent assembly who laid
16:24the path for all of us like me to stand here today.
16:27And I would like to remind us of Vijayalakshmi Pandit's words, freedom is not for the timid.
16:33Protecting our constitution in these harrowing times requires courage.
16:38Let us rise to it.
16:39We will succeed.
16:40Jai Hind.
16:41Don't miss out.
16:42Log on to OneIndia.com for more updates.