Once a Chief Minister is disqualified, Governors – already accused of acting as Delhi’s agents – will gain disproportionate power in deciding interim arrangements.
On August 20, 2025, when the Union government introduced the 130th constitutional amendment bill, it wrapped the move in the rhetoric of moral renewal. Ministers thundered that India could not afford to allow individuals accused of grave crimes to continue occupying high offices of state. To a weary citizenry long accustomed to politicians facing grave charges yet occupying ministerial office, the promise appeared overdue. It seemed, for the first time in decades, that the political class was willing to address the decay wrought by criminalisation that has haunted Indian democracy since the 1980s.
Yet, beneath the facade of reform, the text of the Bill reveals a far more troubling intent. Under its provisions, any Chief Minister or minister who remains in custody for more than thirty days on allegations of offences carrying a sentence of five years or more would automatically lose office.
Notably, conviction is not a prerequisite. Guilt does not need to be established in a court of law. The presumption of innocence – a pillar of democratic jurisprudence – is cast aside. In contemporary India, where custody too often reflects political expediency rather than legal rigour, the implications are deeply unsettling.
The government’s defence of the amendment rests on an appeal to integrity. Ministers claim that governance cannot be entrusted to leaders whose freedom is curtailed by jail walls. But this ignores the fact that India already has a framework to deal with precisely such scenarios. Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 disqualifies politicians upon conviction for serious crimes.
The Supreme Court, in the landmark Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India (2018), underlined that while criminalisation in politics was indeed a corrosive force, disqualification before conviction would be unconstitutional. The Court reminded Parliament that the presumption of innocence is non-negotiable.
The 130th Amendment strikes at the heart of this principle. By conflating detention with guilt, it lowers the bar for political elimination to an almost absurd level. Detention in India is not a rare or exceptional step; it is frequently secured by the state through long charge-sheets, repeated adjournments, and preventive detention laws stretched well beyond their original remit.
Under such conditions, custody becomes less a safeguard of justice and more an instrument of political expediency. In effect, the Bill risks transforming criminalisation of politics into the criminalisation of dissent.
The weaponisation of investigative agencies
This danger is not hypothetical. The last decade has offered a sobering demonstration of how investigative bodies can be bent to political will. Agencies like the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Income Tax Department have increasingly appeared less like neutral watchdogs and more like formidable instruments of pressure.
Statistics tell their own story: nearly ninety-five% of ED cases against politicians since 2014 have targeted opposition leaders. Convictions remain negligible, yet the process itself becomes the punishment – raids, summons, weeks in custody, and the media spectacle that follows.
The list of those caught in this web reads like a roll call of opposition across the spectrum. Arvind Kejriwal, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo was arrested in the so-called excise policy case when he was Delhi’s Chief Minister, petrifying the functioning of his administration.
Hemant Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) was forced to resign after his arrest in a land scam case, just months before elections. Lalu Prasad Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav have faced repeated CBI and ED interventions in “land-for-jobs” and other cases. Sharad Pawar’s nephew Ajit Pawar, once under the scanner for a multi-crore irrigation scam, suddenly found relief after switching sides to the BJP camp in Maharashtra – a coincidence too neat to ignore.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut spent months in jail before securing bail. In Kashmir, leaders like Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti faced raids that coincided with their defiance of Delhi’s policies. Even in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, the pattern has been predictable: ministers in M.K. Stalin’s cabinet and Mamata Banerjee’s close aides have found themselves under constant siege from central agencies.
It is in this political context that the 130th Amendment must be read. Stripped of its rhetoric, it hands central agencies a veto over state leadership. A thirty-day detention order – something well within the capacity of a motivated investigation – can topple elected governments, regardless of whether the leader still commands the support of the legislature.
A return to Article 356-style centralisation
India has seen such centralisation before. During the heyday of Indira Gandhi’s power, Article 356 was a blunt instrument used to dismiss opposition-led state governments at will. In the S.R. Bommai judgment of 1994, the Supreme Court finally clipped this abuse, declaring federalism a part of the Constitution’s basic structure. The 130th Amendment, however, attempts to resurrect the spirit of Article 356 through the back door. Instead of the President’s proclamation, custody orders secured by the ED or CBI will suffice to unseat an elected Chief Minister.
The beauty of the move, from the Union government’s perspective, lies in a veneer of plausible deniability. The government can insist it is not dismissing state governments; it is merely “upholding integrity.” The law, however, is reduced to a fig leaf. Where once Article 356 drew public outrage and judicial scrutiny, the quiet mechanics of custody will achieve the same end with less noise. It is legality masquerading as morality, but its substance is authoritarianism.
Federalism hollowed out
The deeper casualty is Indian federalism itself. State governments derive their legitimacy from their legislatures, not from the good graces of central agencies. If the accountability of state leaders is transferred from the assembly to investigative officers, the principle of state sovereignty is hollowed out. Already, states complain of fiscal centralisation under GST, reduced autonomy over resources, and shrinking space for dissent. The Amendment would compound this erosion by making their leadership perpetually vulnerable to politically timed detentions.
The electoral implications are equally serious. Competitive politics rests on a level playing field. If opposition leaders can be toppled or disqualified without trial, then elections risk becoming little more than managed contests, tilted heavily in favour of the ruling party.
Political scientists call this “competitive authoritarianism” – where elections exist, but the institutional bias ensures that they rarely change power. Once a Chief Minister is disqualified, Governors – already accused of acting as Delhi’s agents – will gain disproportionate power in deciding interim arrangements.
The probable misuse: From reform to retaliation
The probable misuse of the Amendment is almost written into its design. The very vagueness of what constitutes a “serious offence,” the ease with which custody can be prolonged, and the demonstrated pattern of partisan investigations together create a perfect recipe for abuse. Opposition-run states will bear the brunt. A chief minister pushing back against the Union government’s diktats can be swiftly neutralised by an investigation, a raid, and thirty days of pre-trial custody. The fallout is predictable: political paralysis in states, erosion of trust in institutions, and a chilling effect on dissent.
Moreover, the Bill risks creating perverse incentives. Leaders under investigation may feel compelled to switch allegiance to the ruling camp simply to escape the sword of disqualification. This is not theoretical: the case of Ajit Pawar already shows how conveniently investigations evaporate once political loyalties change. The Amendment would codify this dynamic into the Constitution itself, turning the threat of custody into an everyday bargaining chip of coalition politics.
The path of genuine reform
None of this is to suggest that the problem of criminalisation is imagined. Data from the Association for Democratic Reforms shows that nearly 46% of MPs face criminal charges. This is a damning reflection on the state of Indian democracy. Nearly 42% of the country’s sitting Chief Ministers stand accused in criminal cases, with as many as ten facing grave charges ranging from attempt to murder to bribery and kidnapping. What is more telling is the political skew: seven of these leaders are from Opposition-ruled States, while just one represents the BJP.
But genuine reform cannot mean empowering the ruling party to decide which “tainted” leader falls and which survives. That is not cleansing politics; it is cleansing the opposition.
Real reform would mean expediting trials against politicians through fast-track courts, as directed by the Supreme Court. It would mean disqualification only upon conviction, not on the far shakier ground of detention. It would require independent oversight mechanisms for agencies like the ED and CBI, insulating them from political masters. It would demand transparency in appointments and funding, so that investigative might is not reduced to an election weapon.
Until such measures are undertaken, lofty speeches about purifying politics ring hollow. The 130th Amendment, far from a constitutional remedy, appears designed to enshrine selective authoritarianism within the framework of the Constitution itself. Its probable misuse is not a matter of speculation but of precedent, written daily into the experience of Indian politics.