How pragmatism, compulsions forced bitter rivals AAP, Congress, SAD to unitedly oppose Delhi Bill

A smooth passage for the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023 – previously referred to as the Delhi Ordinance – in the Lok Sabha was never in doubt. On Thursday (August 3), the Bill that takes away the Supreme Court-mandated executive control of the Delhi government over its bureaucracy and vests it with the Centre-appointed Lieutenant Governor was passed by a voice vote in the Lok Sabha.

The debate saw interventions from 29 speakers from the Treasury (including Union home minister Amit Shah, whose ministry piloted the Bill) and Opposition Benches participated. That a discussion on the Bill, which is expected to sail through in the Rajya Sabha next week with the help of non-aligned Opposition outfits such as the BJD and the YSRCP, would be high on acrimony was expected.

Delhi MP Lekhi’s brazen threat

On this score, Thursday’s debate did not disappoint. Sushil Kumar Rinku, the lone Lok Sabha MP from the AAP, the party which stridently worked for building Opposition unity against the controversial legislation, was suspended from the House for the remainder of the Monsoon Session for disrupting the discussion. Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha, and Amit Shah held back no punches in criticising the government and the Opposition, respectively. Union minister and Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi too riled the Opposition when she told protesting BSP MP Danish Ali, “shaant raho, tumhare ghar na ED aaj jaye” (keep quiet, else the ED may come to your house) – a swipe that sounded as much like a brazen threat to use the Enforcement Directorate for intimidating the Centre’s political rivals.

Also read: Delhi Services Bill passed in Lok Sabha; Opposition walks out

Yet, amid these raucous exchanges, there was also a textbook exposition of how expediency and compulsions often unite bitter political rivals.

The Congress’s opposition to the Bill in Parliament had already been secured by AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal, who had made this a non-negotiable pre-condition for his party’s entry into the 26-party Opposition grouping, Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA). As such, despite strident demands from its Delhi and Punjab units for not coming to the AAP’s aid in Parliament over the Bill, the Congress leadership kept its word to Kejriwal.

At the risk of slighting its leaders from Delhi and Punjab, who continue to be trenchant critics of the AAP despite the party being a member of the INDIA coalition, the Congress ensured that its MPs – Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor and Sivaganga MP Karti Chidambaram – vociferously opposed the Bill.

Also read: AAP’s lone Lok Sabha member Rinku suspended for ‘unruly behaviour’

Why SAD opposed the Bill

The discussion over the Bill had practically been reduced in the public eye to an AAP versus BJP battle despite the Opposition’s – particularly the Congress’s – best efforts to keep it rooted in questions of constitutional vision, ethics and propriety. It was no wonder then that the internecine squabbles between the AAP and the Congress, bitter political rivals in Delhi and Punjab, was repeatedly exploited by BJP leaders, including Shah, Piyush Goyal, Nishikant Dubey and Delhi MPs Meenakshi Lekhi and Ramesh Bidhuri, to mock the Grand Old Party for coming to Kejriwal’s defence “for vested interests” of keeping the INDIA coalition united. Shah made it a point to assert that the AAP would quit the INDIA coalition once the Bill is enacted by Parliament.

While the Congress’s decision to oppose the Bill and the legal points on which it would do so had been known for some time now, what surprised many was the unequivocal condemnation of the legislation by another staunch critic of the AAP and an old rival of the Congress – the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD).

Like the Congress in Delhi, Punjab and parts of Gujarat, the SAD has lost much of its ground to the AAP in Punjab. Once a key ally of the BJP, the Akali Dal had quit the National Democratic Alliance in protest against the three farm laws, which the Narendra Modi government had bulldozed through Parliament but repealed later in wake of the massive peasants’ protests. However, its past alliance with the BJP coupled with its own organisational deficiencies had led to the Akalis being routed in the 2022 Assembly polls in Punjab, a state where farmers are a key vote bank. There had been speculation last month of the SAD’s return to the NDA fold but this was rebuffed by party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal while Modi, during the July 18 meeting of the revamped NDA, too questioned the hold of the Badal family over the Akali Dal, claiming that the ‘real Akali Dal’ is the faction led by Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa.

Also read: AAP opposition to Delhi services bill aimed at hiding corruption: Amit Shah

Its rift with the BJP widening and its political ground in Punjab slipping to the AAP, the SAD, perhaps, felt it necessary to use the discussion on the Delhi Bill to tell the electorate in its home state that the party continues to fight any outfit that undermines Punjab’s interests.

In her intervention during the debate, SAD’s Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal strongly opposed the Delhi Bill in what was evidently a tough balancing act for her to pull through. However, her intervention was laced with as much criticism of the BJP as of the AAP and the Congress.

While the SAD’s decision to vote against the Bill may have ultimately been an endorsement of the stand taken by the AAP and the Congress against the contentious legislation, Kaur gave neither party a reason to rejoice. She equated the provisions of the Bill, which seek to rob an elected government of its executive powers over its bureaucracy, with the “situation in Punjab” under the AAP government. The Bathinda MP asserted that the Bill had “already been implemented in Punjab” and went on to qualify her remark by claiming that though Punjab had its own elected government, “the state is already under the control of Kejriwal… a leader of a small union territory is ruling the state”.

INDIA alliance’s walkout

Kaur said that just as the Delhi Bill envisaged that transfers and posting of bureaucrats in Delhi will not be under executive control of Delhi’s elected government but with the Centre, through its LG, in Punjab “the selection of the DGP, AGP, Chief Secretary, Principal Secretary… are all decided by Kejriwal; even Rajya Sabha seats from Punjab are occupied by people from Delhi”.

In what can only be called hilariously ironic, the parties of the INDIA coalition that had spent weeks strategising on how to collectively oppose and vote against the Bill, walked out before the legislation was put to vote. The SAD, now not just a rival of the anti-Bill AAP and the Congress but also of its old ally, the ruling BJP, stayed back to vote against the legislation.