Kapil Sibal breaks down the new Bills to remove ministers — and talks termites

On the final day of the monsoon session of Parliament, senior advocate and Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal put out a video on his YouTube channel — an explainer of two of the three Bills tabled yesterday, 20 August, by union home minister Amit Shah.

The three Bills — now all referred for review to a parliamentary committee — are:

• The Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill, 2025,

• The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2025, and

• The Government of Union Territories (Amendment) Bill, 2025

The first and third Bills, numbered 111 and 113, are meant for the states and the union territories, of course, and largely have the same impact and intent.

The simple stipulation of the Bills, on the face of it, is that any minister facing any "serious charges" — that is, an offence carrying a prison term of five years or more — will need to resign within 30 days if he is taken into custody, Sibal explains. If they have not done so, then on the 31st day, either the President (in the case of an union minister or the prime minister) or the governor of the state or union territory, are required to remove them from office.

The impact, in short, Sibal says, is that by Day 31, an accused minister shall no longer remain a minister — be it of a state or of the Union of India.

However, the first thing to note, he added, is that this Bill can never be passed.

The reason, Sibal said, is to take forward a Constitutional amendment, the Centre needs a two-thirds majority. "What they have, the NDA government," he said, "is 293 votes at present, and they need 363 for a two-thirds majority."

"So it is certain," Sibal continued, "that this Bill can never be passed. But there is something I want to place before the nation..."

"Such laws," he continued, "introduce termites into the Constitution, into its basic structure. And you know what the consequence of such an infestation is." (It was an interesting choice of metaphor from Sibal, there. Many of us will instantly recognise it from having been used by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, in the context of 'corruption', surely relevant here; and also used by the home minister himself — and also used in a different context.)

"A sound, strong structure, once attacked by termites, is ruined" — that, he implied, is the result of many a new law instituted under the Modi-led NDA administration.

A person is innocent until proved guilty, he recalled, and Bills such as these are designed to attack the fundamental premise of the Constitution, he suggested.

That, Sibal said, is the true intent of such legislation — the ruin of democracy.

Taking as his next example the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in Bihar — the way the voters' lists are being drawn up; the way lakhs of names are being deleted, but with no additions made; the way BLOs (block-level officers) are 'working'; the way enumeration forms are being 'filled' with no supporting documents to verify them and the way they are being uploaded 'per the BDO's orders' — "that too is introducing termites into India's electoral rolls," Sibal said.

"After all, that is the foundational structure on which democracy depends."

"If the voters' lists are ridden with termites, then how can elections be held?" he wondered rhetorically. "So what then is the government's intent?"

"You know," he continued, "that as soon as there is an FIR against any minister, either the CBI arrests them — or if it doesn't, then the Enforcement Directorate steps in and uses the PMLA to arrest them." And then, per the new Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, he stressed, once a person has been taken into custody, it takes months — nay, even years upon years — for them to obtain a bail order.

Former Delhi chief minister "[Arvind] Kejriwal-ji" is an example, he cited, and Delhi state ministers [Satyender] "Jain-sa'ab" and Manish Sisodia, as well as [Jharkhand chief minister] Hemant Soren.

"So I want to ask you — and the home minister," Sibal continued, "has there even been an FIR filed against any of your union ministers? And have there been any FIRs against any ministers in states where you [the BJP] run the government?"

Speaking later in English (having put his argument in Hindi first), Sibal noted that the home minister knows he has been "very kind" to his own union ministers and the ministers of states in which the BJP is ruling — "because he has a gentle eye towards them, a sense of generosity that they can do no wrong".

"So your thought process, your intent, is obvious," the senior advocate concluded. "Please don't assume the general public lacks understanding."

"Some people believe," he continued, "that they are in power and will continue in power, and there will never come a time when anyone else will come into power."

"That is why all this 'effort', right? Extend the voter list, truncate the voter list, bring in these laws, take Opposition ministers into custody..."

And now, he said, with the new BNS legislation — as opposed to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that said any investigations must be conducted within 15 days, and then the person accused had to be released into judicial custody — now the new laws allow a person to be kept in custody for 60 to 90 days. "First two days, then four, and the 15 days get 'expanded'," Sibal said.

And this is not even when a charge is framed, this is at the stage when the investigation is on, he underlined.

The intent, Sibal suggested, is clear: "to get rid of elected chief ministers". Only, it can't be done because the current ruling dispensation lacks a majority in Parliament.

In a very fundamental way, he said, the antics with the voters' lists too undermine the very foundation of democracy, Sibal said. "The termites that the home minister talked about," he said, "I want to tell him that these are the kind of laws, right, which act like termites in the Constitution of India."

He alleged too that with these new Bills now, the government is trying to divert the people in Bihar who are demonstrating their dissatisfaction, the people who are rallying around Rahul [Gandhi] and Tejashwi [Yadav] to understand what is actually going on, coming to their meetings — for the INDIA bloc leaders are traversing the state on their Voter Adhikar Yatra to publicise the vagaries of the SIR and the 'Vote chori' that the Opposition alleges has already taken place in other states like Karnataka, Maharashtra, Goa and Rajasthan.

"After all, you [the Government of India] know this law cannot actually be passed," he reiterated, as proof the Bills are but a diversionary tactic.

Speaking of the recent press conference by the chief election commissioner — "and you know what you are doing through your CEC," he admonished the Modi government — Sibal noted his "pathetic" refusal to answer questions, a level of arrogance such as "has never been seen in the history of this country" from any election commissioner.

"It is because of the arrogance of the power at the Centre that he [the CEC] exudes that arrogance. It percolates down..." said the Raja Sabha MP.

"I want to put this request to you," said Sibal, addressing the Centre. "The Constitution is for all of us — for you, for us, for every one of us. So don't do this, don't destroy what it took hundreds of years of struggle by the people of India to build — which it took to free us from the yoke of colonialism.

"After hundreds of years of struggle, we were able to give our people this Constitution. Don't let termites loose in it like this." 

"Don't destroy that [Constitution] through actions like this which no reasonable person in government will ever take — unless his mind is focused on destroying democracy itself."

The full address is hosted on his channel 'Dil se with Kapil Sibal' here.