Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar’s Changing Equation with PM Modi Raises Questions
New Delhi: The conspicuous silence by BJP over vice president Jagdeep Dhankhar’s sudden resignation, and later Prime Minister Narendra Modi matter-of-fact response, reveal much more than they hide. The prime minister, known for showering flattering remarks on constitutional position holders, bid goodbye to Dhankhar in unusually curt terms; he said that the outgoing vice-president has had “many opportunities to serve our country in various capacities”, wished him good health, but curiously refrained from commenting on his tenure as the VP and Rajya Sabha chairman.
Notably, this insipid post came after he wished Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and ally Ajit Pawar on their birthday. More importantly, Modi’s post put to rest all speculations that his resignation may not be accepted, and the government may be looking to convince Dhankhar to reconsider. His resignation was accepted within 12 hours.
At the same time, the BJP leaders hardly remarked on VP’s resignation, as if Dhankhar outwitted the BJP and took the party rank and file by complete surprise. They remained silent even when stories that the VP will not make a farewell speech in the ongoing monsoon session nor will be organising a farewell function were being circulated in the media.
However, at least one development, following Dhankhar’s sudden exit, showed that they were anything but alert in the unfolding situation. As speculations were rife about Dhankhar being possibly upset about BJP president J.P. Nadda and parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju’s uninformed absence in the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting in the parliament at 4:30 PM on Monday, Nadda was quick to remark that the VP’s office was told about their inability to attend the BAC meeting.
Something surely has hit the BJP when it was unprepared. The silence on the resignation of Dhankhar, who had earned a dubious reputation of blatantly being partisan towards the party even while holding constitutional positions like West Bengal’s governor and now the Rajya Sabha chairman, indicates that there may be more at play than Dhankhar’s poor health condition, which he cited in his resignation letter.
After all, Dhankhar had dropped no hints that his resignation may be in the offing. On Monday, he presided over the Upper House like any other day, led two BAC meetings that discussed the House agenda in the upcoming days, conducted the House in his quintessential style – passing acerbic comments on MPs, quoting rule books casually and pleading with MPs to maintain decorum – but gave nothing to know that he was planning to exit from the second-highest constitutional position without finishing his term.
The Wire reported earlier, observers are still struggling to make sense of Dhankhar’s sudden resignation, and those even within the higher echelons of the BJP are privately offering a reason that his decision to accept the opposition’s notice to remove Justice Yashwant Varma, who recently was in the middle of a storm after stacks of cash was recovered from his Delhi bungalow during a fire rescue operation. Dhankhar accepted the notice and asked house officials to take it forward.
BJP sources told NDTV that by letting the opposition take the lead in the upper house, Dhankhar may have upset the Union government’s plan to lead the anti-corruption narrative on Justice Varma from the Lok Sabha where a similar notice was accepted against the judge by the speaker Om Birla. There are others who also speculate that the government was still unsure about taking up the matter of his impeachment, as that may also open up the road for a similar removal of Allahabad high court judge Shekhar Yadav, against whose anti-Muslim remarks the opposition has rallied over 50 signatures in a bid for an impeachment motion.
Dhankhar may have jumped the gun by accepting opposition notice on Justice Varma’s removal. “The sources have also indicated that Jagdeep Dhankhar’s resignation may have spared him a government-backed no-confidence motion,” NDTV reported.
While this may be one possibility, some other observers also believe that Dhankhar’s tirade against the judiciary in recent months, even though it favoured the BJP, may have led to a tussle between the government and the judiciary. He has taken strong political positions in his constitutional office, particularly in the case when the Supreme Court reprimanded the Tamil Nadu governor on constitutional grounds for refusing or sitting on the state government’s bills.
Dhankhar called the judges “super parliament” and went on to term Article 142, that gives some Independent powers to the top court, as “a nuclear missile against democratic forces”.
Recently, he hit out at the Supreme Court once again on the heels of political debate around Justice Varma’s alleged corruption. He said that things would have been different if the SC had not struck down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act in 2015. Back in 2022, his initial days as the VP, he had defended the NJAC Act and criticised the apex court for striking it down as a “glaring instance” of “severe compromise” of parliamentary sovereignty and disregard of the “mandate of the people”.
Well, if the government felt compromised with Dhankhar’s statements, his resignation may have been coming, given the propensity of the Modi government to dictate constitutional offices in tune with its political plans.
But with this development, look how the tables have turned. The government and BJP leaders have maintained silence, while leaders from the opposition ranks have, perhaps for the first time, given some credit to Dhankhar.
Congress spokesperson Jairam Ramesh wrote on X, “The PM’s non-post on X regarding Shri Jagdeep Dhankar’s forced resignation has only added to the mystery of his abrupt exit. Surely the PM could have been a bit more gracious–he is, after all, the supreme master of hypocrisy. The kisanputra is being denied even a dignified farewell.”
Ramesh had earlier narrated about how he had a meeting with Dhankhar at 5 PM and then spoke with him on phone at 7:30 PM regarding the BAC meeting on Tuesday. “Mr. Dhankhar (sic) took both the Government and the Opposition to task in equal measure. He had fixed a meeting of the Business Advisory Committee tomorrow at 1 PM. He was also to make some major announcements related to the judiciary tomorrow,” Ramesh said, adding that there may be “far deeper reasons” for his resignation than what meets the eye.
The Congress leader and many others came out to express their shock and called for a dignified exit. Such a turn of events is especially remarkable after the no-confidence motion that the INDIA bloc had moved against Dhankhar in the Rajya Sabha. The motion was dismissed by deputy chairperson of the Upper House, Harivansh, who said it was an attempt to malign the vice president.
Whatever be the reason behind his mysterious resignation, Dhankhar’s unceremonious exit, especially after remaining a blue-eyed boy in the BJP ranks, both as Bengal governor and India’s vice president, shows a steep fall for the 74-year-old dyed-in-the-wool politician.
However, the poor treatment he was shown makes it apparent that the BJP and the larger Sangh Parivar could never accept the former Janata Dal and Congress leader as one of its very own, despite the fact that Dhankhar, perhaps to upstage a rather long list of sycophants in the saffron party, consistently disregarded even his constitutional positions to strengthen Modi government’s political narrative.
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