Parliament panel seeks changes to Bill on removal of PM, CMs and Ministers after 30 days in jail

Published 10 July 2026 · politics

A Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill has recommended replacing the provision for automatic “removal” of a Prime Minister

A Joint Parliamentary Committee examining the Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill has recommended replacing the provision for automatic “removal” of a Prime Minister, Chief Minister or Minister after 30 consecutive days in judicial custody with “suspension”, though the immediate consequence in both cases would be that the public functionary demits office. Most Opposition parties, arguing that the Bill was driven by “malicious intent”, had declined to join the panel headed by BJP MP Aparajita Sarangi. The proposed constitutional amendment seeks to address what the government describes as a vacuum in cases where public functionaries continue in office during prolonged incarceration. The panel has made five recommendations. These include replacing the Bill’s provisions for a Minister’s “removal” or requirement to “cease to be a Minister” with “suspension”. The recommendation follows submissions from stakeholders that terms such as “removed” and “shall cease to be a Minister” carried “an unwarranted air of finality and stigma”. By contrast, suspension, similar to service rules under which government employees detained beyond a specified period are placed under suspension without any presumption of guilt, is viewed as a reversible measure.

The committee has also recommended defining “serious criminal offences” as offences punishable with imprisonment of five years or more. It proposed an automatic reversal clause under which suspension would lapse upon discharge, acquittal, or failure of the prosecution to proceed within a specified period. The panel also called for fast-track courts to hear cases involving high constitutional functionaries and for a separate schedule listing offences that would attract the proposed provisions. Constitution silent According to the committee’s draft report, there was broad agreement among stakeholders that both the Constitution and the Representation of the People Act, 1951 are presently silent on the consequences of a sitting Prime Minister, Chief Minister or Minister being arrested and held in custody on serious criminal charges. However, the report notes that the sharpest disagreements centred on the mechanism chosen by the Bill rather than its objective. “Notably, even within the supportive cluster, no stakeholder defended the Bill’s present formulation without qualification; and even within the critical cluster, no stakeholder rejected the legislative objective itself,” the report says. “The disagreement lies overwhelmingly in the design of the trigger mechanism and the safeguards attending it, not in the underlying policy goal.” The most contested provision was the Bill’s trigger mechanism, under which a public functionary would automatically lose office after spending 30 continuous days in custody in connection with offences punishable with five years’ imprisonment or more.