Chidambaram on the Constitution amendment bill to remove arrested Ministers https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/p-chidambaram-writes-thankfully-dead-on-arrival-10221104/
The Indian Express reported (August22, 2025) ( https://indianexpress.com/article/political-pulse/sitting-ministers-held-2014-more-than-30-days-new-bills-worry-oppn-10202382/) that, since 2014, 12 ministers belonging to the Opposition parties were held without bail, and many for several
months.According to another report, 25 political leaders with serious charges against them have joined the BJP since 2014, and 23 of them have been exonerated of the charges! As far as I can recall, no BJP minister has been arrested since2014.
If the Bill is passed, India will join the ranks of Belarus, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Congo (DRC), Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Rwanda, Uganda, Venezuela, Zambia and Zimbabwe which routinely jail Opposition leaders
f how the criminal law works . At present,
■ practically, all laws have been weaponised—even GST laws;
■ any police officer (that includes a constable) can arrest with or without a warrant any person against whom… a reasonable suspicion exists that he has
committed a cognizable offence;
■ trial courts are loathe to grant bail despite Justice Krishna Iyer’s dictum that ‘bail is the rule, jail is the exception’;
■High Courts do not grant bail at the first hearing and, after letting the prosecution drag the matter on one pretext or another,may grant bail after 60-90days;
■ as a result of this lamentable state of affairs, scores of bail applications land up in the Supreme Court every day and the Supreme Court has become the Court of
first resort for claiming liberty; and
■the inclusion of the prime minister in the Bill is laughable: no police officer willdare to arrest the primeminister.