Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin on Wednesday strongly objected to The Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill, 2025, introduced by Home Minister Amit Shah in Parliament, which seeks to provide a legal framework for the removal of the Prime Minister, Union Ministers, Chief Ministers, and Ministers of States and Union Territories who are arrested and detained in custody for 30 consecutive days on serious criminal charges.
He said the BJP government at the Centre has decided to defile the Constitution and its democratic foundations by turning India into a dictatorship under the Prime Minister.
“The 130th Constitutional Amendment is not reform. This is a black day and this is a black Bill. This is how dictatorships begin: steal votes, silence rivals and crush States. I strongly condemn this Bill, which strikes at the very root of democracy, and I call upon all the democratic forces to unite against this attempt to turn India into a dictatorship,” Mr. Stalin said in a post on X.
“After the exposé of vote theft, the very mandate on which the Union BJP government was formed is in serious question. Its legitimacy is doubtful. Having stolen the mandate of the people through fraud, the BJP is now desperate to distract public attention from this exposé. To do that, they have brought in the 130th Constitutional Amendment Bill,” Mr. Stalin alleged.
“The plan of this Bill is clear. It allows the BJP to foist false cases against political opponents in power across States and remove them by misusing provisions that treat even a 30-day arrest as a ground for removal of an elected leader, without any conviction or trial. This unconstitutional amendment will certainly be struck down by the courts because guilt is decided only after trial, not by the mere registration of a case,” the Chief Minister said.
“This is a sinister attempt to intimidate regional parties in the NDA, whose leaders are CMs or Ministers in various States — ‘stick with us or else…’ The first move of any emerging dictator is to give himself the power to arrest and remove rivals from office. That is exactly what this Bill seeks to do,” Mr. Stalin added.