IT was a bizarre situation. On the penultimate day of the monsoon session of Parliament, the all-powerful Home Minister, Amit Shah sounded despondent while talking to media channels. In a tone of soliloquy, he posed ‘what is the point in going inside the Lok Sabha’! For context, almost the entire monsoon session could not transact any substantial business as Shah was refusing to explain the role of the Delhi Police on the July 20, in tackling the peaceful student protest at Jantar Mantar.

In the face of a peaceful protest the Delhi Police was at its barbaric worst. Most indiscriminate tear gas shelling, vicious lathi charges even with the use of the spiked ones, policemen in plain clothes and without name tags, women protesters’ private parts targeted, pellet guns fired, pick-up truck in police custody loaded with stones to be thrown at the students to show later on, that the protest was violent – every trick in the play book was out on display. Of course, the absolute new element deployed was the electronic dragnet to invade identity of the protesters and record and store their digital records. It is another thing that none of this arsenal had any statutory backing! That Amit Shah was caught between the rock and a hard place is quite apparent. He forgot that it is the Lok Sabha that had been responsible for his appointment as the Home Minister in the first place. Therefore, he was duty bound to be answerable to that chamber to throw light as to who was responsible for the grotesque treatment of the students by the Delhi Police on the July 20, and later.

He did not have the freedom to beat about the bush and refrain from answering the question on who was responsible for the police action. It is now a pattern with him, as much as he did in skirting similar questions as to how terrorists walked into Pahalgam on that fateful afternoon on April 22, 2025, to mow down 26 innocent Indian tourists. The question is still begging for an answer. The atmosphere has changed and there is just no way to redeem the accountability which he owes. However, the government is caught in a cleft stick - to answer and perish or to keep silent when the call for accountability has gathered momentum. That Dharmendra Pradhan had to – rather, was forced to – resign was an admission that accountability could not be brushed off. But the report of the cancellation of the National Eligibility Test (NET) shows that basically, nothing has changed. The government has to concede that without disbanding the NTA, this hyper centralisation in conducting these examinations they destined to doom.

Modi himself was forced to admit that the school system cannot be improved when students are unable to face the admission process and qualifying examinations without coaching. This confession was made during the course of his Independence Day speech from the ramparts of the Red Fort. Who can deny that close to 94,000 schools across the country have been closed down as officially admitted by the government? The national policy design had argued that the process of closure was part of consolidation. We are now in the seventh year of implementation of the National Education Policy. Yet, without additional coaching, the students’ results cannot prove itself. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court itself was forced to intervene to seek explanation over the police violence on July 20. Clearly, a familiar pattern of criminalising peaceful protests, which has now become the standard wont of the Modi government is not washing!

What is heartening, like a breath of fresh air, is the new environment of receding fear and assertion of collective courage. It is not just the executive, but the judiciary too that is feeling the heat. The students of NALSAR were explicit in protesting and questioning their management over the invitation extended to the Chief Justice of India. The initial response was of heavens falling! But, the students of another national law school reiterated the same sentiments when the CJI was asked to speak in their institute.

While a ruling party henchman and a Rajya Sabha MP, who happens to be the President of the Bar Council of India, initiated punitive measures against NALSAR students, there was all-round criticism from the legal fraternity. No less than the CJI himself reprimanded the BCI President for speaking out of turn. The BJP brass had to beat a hasty retreat. While ticking off the BCI President, the CJI also had to make the point that protest is an inalienable right of the citizen, young or old. Another senior judge of the Supreme Court was candid in pointing out that if the judiciary loses out on credibility, integrity and impartiality in the eyes of the people, it will end up being irrelevant. Essentially, within the judiciary, the sense was dawning that though not elected by the people, it needs to be accountable to them as envisaged in our Constitution.

However, one constitutional institution has not yet relented – the Election Commission of India. The SIR process, though not a particularly hot topic in the mainstream media now, the reports are nevertheless trickling out to show that names of voters are being dropped from the electoral rolls as a result of usage of software and algorithm, in the most opaque manner. As much as the question of accountability is concerned, the constitutional right of citizens – the right to vote – cannot be done away with just like that. Therefore, in this new atmosphere for collective assertion of the people to safeguard their constitutional rights and to demand accountability from the executive and the judiciary, commensurate demand for ECI’s accountability is going to reverberate, Donald Trump’s certificate not withstanding!

Let us move forward towards a regime of transparency and greater accountability. This will be the lifeline for our democracy and defence of our constitutional order.

(August 19, 2026)