On the eve of Parliament’s monsoon session, the beleaguered Opposition, reeling under splits and floor-crossings, rallied together Saturday to attack the BJP government over moving activist Sonam Wangchuk from his Jantar Mantar protest site to Safdarjung Hospital. The signal was clear: the issue will find an echo in the House when it reopens Monday.
Wangchuk has been on a hunger strike since June 28 as part of a protest organised by the Cockroach Janta Party, demanding broader reforms to the examination system and the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over repeated examination paper leaks.
This session is crucial. The Opposition has been in disarray, ironically, after they unitedly forced the defeat of the Constitution amendment Bill to increase parliamentary seats in April. Since then, 37 Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs from four anti-BJP parties have defected to the ruling side – making it the largest floor crossing from the Opposition to the Treasury benches in parliament since the enactment of the anti-defection law in 1985. One Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP, Koel Mallick, resigned earlier this week.
This, even as the DMK has been unclear on its stance on the key bills which it had stridently opposed three months ago. With the government seemingly preparing to bring back the Constitution (131st Amendment Bill) for implementing the Women’s Reservation law and the Delimitation Bill, the opposition is hoping that the Wangchuk issue could at least bring all parties on one page to start with.
It is to be seen whether this issue alone has enough fuel to keep the parties together and sustain their campaign against the government given that Wangchuk is now away from the protest site and is replaced by CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke.
The Congress, for one, has been indifferent to the CJP protest given that Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has been raising the same set of issues for a while and held two public engagements, Kota in June and in Dehradun Friday. But with Sonia Gandhi nudging the party to publicly express solidarity with Wangchuk — invoking the fact that Indira Gandhi had in 1984 flown to Leh to persuade Wangchuk’s father, Sonam Wangyal, to end a similar hunger strike — the party changed tact.
AICC general secretary K C Venugopal issued a statement first and Rajya Sabha MP Pawan Khera went to Jantar Mantar and met Wangchuk.
On Saturday, Rahul Gandhi broke his silence. He had refrained from commenting on the CJP and the Jantar Mantar protest all these weeks. Those close to him were and are of the view that CJP is a front of the Aam Aadmi Party.
“The core tenets of the Modi government are Asatya and Hinsa. The removal of Sonam Wangchuk ji from Jantar Mantar while he was on a non-violent hunger strike is wrong. Paper leaks, the rising cost of education, and student suicides are critical issues for India’s future. No amount of force can deter India’s students, and those of us who love and believe in them, from raising these issues,” he said in a post on X with the hashtag “ChhatronKiGoonj” — the campaign he has been spearheading. The Congress machinery is working overtime to draw a parallel between how its governments handled the protests by Wangchuk’s father in 1984 and by Anna Hazare in 2011-12 to argue that the BJP government is showing obduracy in engaging with dissent and protests.
Wangchuk, given his image as an apolitical social activist, had drawn a steady stream of Opposition leaders to the protest venue. All of them slammed the government move Saturday. The interesting reaction, however, was of NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar. At a time when there are signals of an invisible BJP hand behind the two NCP factions, Pawar hit out at the government saying it was “irresponsible” in handling Wangchuk’s agitation and accused it of acting like a spectator rather than addressing the genuine demands put forth by students.
“The government moved the activist to the hospital as the situation went beyond its control. Despite this, the protest would continue,” he said in Baramati. He said the demands of the students were genuine but despite the activist being on a fast for 20 days, none of the leaders from the government visited him.
From AAP to Shiv Sena (UBT), Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and the Left, the other Opposition parties said Wangchuk’s removal from Jantar Mantar was an assault on democracy. Sources said the opposition could raise the issue at the customary session-eve all party meeting convened by government Sunday.
“Such arrogance is not right. Instead of forcibly lifting him, the Modi government should have talked to Sonam Wangchuk. Instead of crushing the cockroach movement and reforming the country’s education and examination system, the Modi government’s defeat is in forcibly dealing with Sonam Wangchuk,” Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal said.
TMC chief Mamata Banerjee said Wangchuk “asked only for dialogue, yet his appeal has been met with silence for weeks. In a democracy, peaceful dissent deserves engagement, not silence.”
“His voice has been ignored, just as the voices of countless young Indians continue to be ignored…Public trust is earned through transparency, accountability, and respect for democratic rights…A government that treats dissent as a threat instead of a democratic obligation cannot demand trust while evading accountability,” she said.
Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray termed Wangchuk’s removal a “shame” and alleged that the Delhi Police’s move was an assault on democracy. “What a shame! The world watches democracy in India being broken by force, shamelessly. Even peaceful protests for students against an incompetent minister are not tolerated anymore,” he alleged.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge cited examples such as Professor G D Agrawal’s 111-day fast unto death “to save Mother Ganga”, the wrestlers’ dharna at Jantar Mantar and the farmers’ protest against the three repealed laws to flag what he called “this tyrannical government.” In the government’s eyes, “anyone who raises their voice is an ‘anti-national…parasite,’ he said.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav demanded that Wangchuk’s medical treatment be conducted under judicial oversight, even as he accused the BJP of never having believed in Mahatma Gandhi or his methods of peaceful dissent.
Demanding that the identities of the security personnel who “sneaked in plainclothes” to carry out his removal be made public, Yadav accused the BJP of engaging in “repressive politics.”
Hitting back at the Opposition, BJP’s national IT Department in-charge, Amit Malviya, said: “The opportunists in the Opposition have suddenly woken up this morning, after a comfortable night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, to question why Sonam Wangchuk was shifted despite his deteriorating health and the Delhi High Court’s directions.”
The truth, Malviya said, was “far less dramatic”, adding that when the authorities intervened, many of those who had turned Wangchuk’s fast into “a political spectacle” were nowhere to be seen.
“They were absent when it mattered most. The Opposition never had a constructive vision for this protest. Their objective was not a resolution, but the perpetuation of a crisis for political mileage. That opportunity has now been denied,” he alleged.
