FRAGRANCE OF IDEAS
The monsoon session of the parliament this time was called on 21 July, 2025-Monday and it was announced that the important session would continue for a period of at least a month up to 21 August, 2025. Both the houses of parliament began their usual business on July 21 with the normal routine. The Business Advisory Committee approved schedule was with the presiding officers of both the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha.
As soon as the customary proposals for debate and discussion were brought before the houses and particularly in the Lok Sabha, the opposition went for its traditional course of disruptions and walk-outs. As if this was not enough, the sudden and unexpected resignation of the Vice President of the country, Jagdeep Dhankar stole both the limelight and the headlines.
The resignation of Dhankar in the late hours on the very first day of the session of parliament came as a big surprise to the nation. There are several theories about the resignation issue, both confirmed and unconfirmed. Since the Vice President is also the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, the issue of his resignation created an initial furore among the members of the parliament and particularly the members of the Rajya Sabha of which Dhankar was the Chairman as well.
Dhankar in his resignation letter to the President of India, which was immediately posted by him on social media, described his bad health as the sole reason for his resignation. The President accepted his resignation immediately and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a Tweet on the development the other day saying, “Shri Jagdeep Dhankar Ji has got many opportunities to serve our country in various capacities, including as the Vice President of India. Wishing him good health”.
The description of the story of Dhankar’s resignation by the PM and wishing him good health spoke a variety of answers to the raised questions due to the sudden resignation. One can clearly assume that something very serious had taken place between the government of the day and the Vice President, Dhankar. In order to respect the protocol and the important decorum, Dhankar in his resignation letter made a very important statement.
He said, “To prioritise health care and abide by medical advice, I hereby resign as Vice President of India, effective immediately, in accordance with Article 67(a) of the Constitution. I express my deep gratitude to the Hon’ble Prime Minister and the esteemed Council of Ministers.
The Prime Minister’s cooperation and support have been invaluable, and I have learned much during my time in office. The warmth, trust, and affection I have received from the Hon’ble Members of Parliament would ever be cherished and embedded in my memory. I am deeply thankful for the invaluable experiences and insights I have gained as Vice President in our great democracy”
These two crisp statements by the Prime Minister and the Vice President of India brought immediate curtains on the whole issue but people in the media and outside it kept on analysing the whole gamut of issues related to the sudden development. Parliament members, particularly from the Rajya Sabha made a number of queries about the situation.
While the opposition leaders and other members kept on debating and discussing the issue outside the parliament, the treasury benches maintained a measured silence. It all hinted towards the fact that some serious issues had erupted that consumed the remaining part of the tenure of the Vice President, Dhankar. There is no doubt in it that the course of disruptions and walk-outs by the opposition had an element of shock present in their whole theatrics outside the parliament.
The opposition continued to disrupt the proceedings of the parliament in both the houses and sat on the sit-in-protests outside the parliament on one pretext or the other. For one full week, they sent a message that disruption was the main agenda of the opposition and they had a constitutional right to do so.
On the one hand they sought debate and discussion on issues like Operation Sindoor, Pahalgan terror carnage, Special Intensive Review of the electoral rolls in Bihar and the important issues concerning the common public, on the other hand they made it sure that the houses are not allowed to function. Their dual standards exposed them fully before the public and ultimately on 28 July-Monday, the houses began their usual activity in a partial manner. However, debates and discussions resumed and the disruptions came to a halt. It is doubtful whether the halt is temporary or quasi-permanent.
The debate was initiated by Rajnath Singh, the Defence Minister of India. He gave a complete presentation to the house about the situation that emerged before, during and after the Operation-Sindoor. He connected the terror carnage and the related matters with the grand issue of the Operation Sindoor and matters incidental thereof.
He categorically refused to buy the argument that there was any sort of third party intervention in the case of the so-called ceasefire between India and Pakistan. He made a specific statement conveying that the Operation Sindoor had some initial targets and all of them were achieved to the satisfaction of the government of India and the Defence paraphernalia.
The External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar made it clear that ‘there was no direct communication between President Trump and PM Narendra Modi between the period from April 22 and 17 June 2025. The ceasefire between the two armies of India and Pakistan had no linkage with US trade’. When he was speaking on the issue, the opposition again sought to their most favourite pastime i.e., disruption and ruckus. They didn’t accede to the repeated appeals made by the Speaker of the House, asking the members to listen to the Minister and place their point of view on their turn.
Amit Shah, the Home Minister of India intervened and asked ‘the opposition benches as to whether the statement made by the Cabinet Minister (S.Jaishankar) who has taken oath of the constitution is not acceptable to them..! The opposition members seem to be guided by the leaders of the foreign lands rather than the leaders of their own nation.
He went on to say that everyone could understand why the opposition members, particularly the Congress, are guided by foreign advice and statements’. He didn’t stop there and sarcastically told the Congress that with the mindset they have adopted is going to keep them on those benches of the opposition in the House for the next twenty years.
The Home Minister also said, “Soon after the Pahalgam attack, I had met the affected families. I saw standing before me a woman who had been widowed just 6 day after her wedding. I can never forget that scene. I want to tell all families today that Modi ji neutralised those who sent the terrorists, and today our security forces killed those who committed the killings”.
The most unfortunate part of the discussion was that the opposition members in their speeches made heavily loaded statements against the government with negative connotations in relation to the Operation Sindoor and even raised issues concerning the army. They in their speeches resembled the tone and tenor of the Pakistan leaders on the issue, which seemed not only stunning but also highly motivated.
In its true sense, the opposition members seem to have lost their mainstream highway that would have exhibited their patriotism and reasonable thinking. They are overwhelmed with a high dose of negativity on every aspect of the governance, politics and national approach to the common cause.
For them, everybody in the government, constitutional institutions, presiding officers of the legislative houses, judiciary and the head of the government are ‘untrustworthy, incompetent and unworthy’. They took exception to the Special Intensive Revision conducted by the Election Commission of India for which the Commission is constitutionally and legally empowered.
They raised hue and cry and even went to the Supreme Court of India but didn’t accept the verdict of the court in its real sense. All the elections conducted over the last 11 years in which they lost (somewhere miserably) were in their opinion ‘maneuvered and manipulated’.
It is a record for a national political party like the Congress to lose 90 elections in a row for the last more than a decade. Instead it could have gone for the sessions of introspection, review and reform, it has a tendency to blame the ECI and the government for the defeat. It has even lost to honour the mandate of the people and have thus lost their support on the ground.
After the defeat in the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, the opposition lost all major states to the NDA-BJP, i.e., Haryana, Maharashtra & Delhi. The previous year they lost Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. However, they made a good presence in Jharkhand but BJP made a remarkable entry in the J&K Assembly from the Jammu region.
The Supreme Court of India on 28 July 2025, refused to stop the Election Commission of India from publishing the draft electoral rolls for Bihar on August 1 as per the schedule notified for the Special Intensive Revision by the ECI. This is indeed a real setback to the opposition and the INDI-Alliance.
The Court has now fixed August 12-13 for the next hearing and has also said that the court will intervene in case there is mass exclusion of voters from the voting list. The fact of the matter is that such exercises have been conducted by the ECI a number of times in the past and the latest such exercise was done in 2003 when again the UPA-Congress was in the opposition.
The opposition requires a thorough orientation training camp for itself in the given situation to know the basics of parliamentary democracy, governance, diplomacy, constitutional values and art of public speech. In case they avoid doing so, there is very little hope that they would change their course of disruptions, fake narratives and false speeches…!
(The author is a senior BJP & KP leader, Human Rights Defender, author & columnist and can be reached on: [email protected])
