Democratic Decay in India: Weaponising the Constitution to Curb Parliamentary Deliberation

Abstract

The scholarship on the practice of abusive constitutionalism or autocratic legalism has shown how autocrats nowadays use tools of constitutional or legal changes to establish their authoritarian projects. This paper is an attempt to expand this idea. It studies the approach to law-making of the current NDA government in India and argues that autocrats need not even bring in any overt constitutional or legal change if they could manoeuver within the existing constitutional framework. It shows that since the Government was elected to power in 2014, it has employed several constitutionally permitted tools to curb parliamentary deliberation in the law-making process. These tools have enabled the Government to neutralise Parliament, overpower the balanced relationship between the legislature and the executive, and undermine the republican aspect of the Indian democracy, all the while remaining within the bounds of the Constitution. This paper documents three tools employed by the government – the ordinance-making power, the anti-defection law, and the powers of the chair – which have contributed significantly to the incremental establishment of authoritarian rule in India.

Keywords: Democratic Decay, Abusive Constitutionalism, Parliamentary Deliberation, India, Modi Government, Ordinance Making Power, Anti-Defection Law, Chair of the House, Speaker