Ideology, Power and the BJP’s Pursuit of a Two-Thirds Majority

The saffron party, despite the setback of the 2024 General Elections, where its tally fell from 303 to 240, has since won state after state, steadily uprooting the strongholds of regional satraps. The latest, and perhaps the most telling, is West Bengal, where Mamata Banerjee’s TMC had ruled uninterrupted since 2011.

Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, a four-time MP from the Barasat constituency on a TMC ticket, had sensed the changing wind against her party well before the storm arrived. Sources say that nearly three months before the elections that eventually uprooted Banerjee’s government, she had quietly begun dialling numbers in the BJP high command, exploring a Plan B should her party lose.

Soon after the election results came in, with TMC reduced to 80 seats and BJP sweeping 207 of the 294 Assembly constituencies, Dastidar stepped out of the shadows of backchannel negotiations and into open rebellion. In her resignation letter on May 27, she referred to allegations of corruption within the party and appealed to Banerjee to once again rely on honest, experienced and dedicated workers to restore what remained of the party’s battered image.

Putting the blame for her party’s defeat on the spread of criminalisation within its ranks, Dastidar and 19 other MPs quit the TMC and joined the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI), a little-known outfit based out of Tripura, pledging their support to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre.

Three weeks later, a similar situation was unfolding in the Shiv Sena (UBT) camp. When Uddhav Thackeray called for a meeting of all nine party MPs, three legislators skipped it. By then, speculation was rife around what was being called Operation Tiger. It was confirmed on June 22 when six rebel Lok Sabha members formally joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.

The TMC and UBT were not alone. In April, seven Rajya Sabha members from the AAP quit and merged with the BJP. In all three cases, the MPs who quit their respective parties had calculated the arithmetic carefully. The anti-defection law, designed to penalise legislators who walk out on the party under whose banner they won their seats, loses its teeth if the defectors number at least two-thirds of the party’s total strength in that House.

The Opposition may be struggling to explain the churn, but the BJP sees it as validation of its political ascent. Those at the helm of the party can barely conceal their satisfaction.

For BJP spokesperson Tuhin Sinha, the defections reflect a dramatic reversal of political fortunes. “The BJP was once struggling for numbers. Today, there appears to be competition among rivals, with leaders breaking away from their respective parties and aligning with the BJP,” he says. Sinha attributes the trend to what he describes as growing public frustration with the “obstructionist and regressive functioning” of several regional parties.

With legislators from rival parties increasingly gravitating towards the BJP’s headquarters on Delhi’s Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, the party appears to be moving towards the kind of parliamentary strength every government covets, but few manage to secure: a two-thirds majority.

That number carries enormous political weight. In India’s parliamentary history, only three governments have crossed that mark on their own—three terms of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi’s Congress after the 1971 Bangladesh war, and Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress in the sympathy wave following his mother’s assassination in 1984. If the BJP reaches that threshold through a combination of electoral victories and post-election political realignments, it will stand alongside some of the most dominant governments independent India has seen.

Majority Isn’t Enough

The BJP, ahead of taking over the political reins in 2014, had been making a slew of promises—Ram temple, Uniform Civil Code (UCC), One Nation, One Election (ONOE), women’s reservation and the abrogation of Article 370, among others. Some promises have been kept; the others are stuck in political rigmarole for which the BJP needs political consensus.

To convince the Opposition and the electorate, the party has been promoting some promises as reforms that will facilitate the effective functioning of democracy. The ONOE, for instance. “It will reduce costs and ensure that the government works without bothering about elections. It is in the national interest,” says BJP MP Prem Prakash Chaudhary, who heads the Joint Parliamentary Committee looking into ONOE.

But for the passage of these reforms, the BJP will have to crack the numbers game. It didn’t prove easy the last time over.

On April 17, 2026, the party convened a special session of Parliament to push through what it described as a landmark constitutional amendment guaranteeing 33 per cent reservation for women in Parliament and state legislatures. But the legislation carried a politically contentious rider. Alongside women’s reservation, the government proposed redrawing constituencies based on the 2011 Census and expanding the Lok Sabha from 543 to around 850 seats.

That proved a bridge too far for the Opposition. The Bill was defeated by 298 votes to 230, well short of the two-thirds majority required for a constitutional amendment. It marked the first time in more than a decade that Narendra Modi’s government had failed to secure Parliament’s approval for a constitutional amendment, underscoring the limits of governing without a constitutional majority.

The Opposition’s resistance was rooted in arithmetic as much as principle. States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, which stand to lose the most seats under a population-based reallocation of seats in Parliament, are precisely the states where the BJP has historically struggled to gain a foothold. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, leading the charge against the Bill, alleged that it had nothing to do with empowering women and was instead an attempt to change the country’s electoral map using women as cover. The rare unity of the Opposition on the floor of the House laid bare a hard truth. Governing 22 states and Union Territories as part of the NDA and representing more than 70 per cent of India’s electorate counts for little when the Constitution demands more than a simple majority.

When Narendra Modi first came to power in 2014, the BJP became the first party in three decades to secure a majority on its own, ending an era in which governments were dependent on coalition partners for survival. Although the party continued to lead the NDA, it no longer needed allies to remain in office. That political comfort disappeared after the 2024 General Elections.

Reduced to 240 seats, the BJP fell well short of the 272 needed for a majority in the Lok Sabha and returned to power only with the support of key allies, most notably the Telugu Desam Party [TDP] (16 seats) and the Janata Dal (United) (12 seats). Coalition governments often have to negotiate major policy decisions with alliance partners, many of whom are reluctant to support reforms that could alienate their regional or social support bases.

For a party with an ambitious legislative and ideological agenda, a simple majority is only the beginning. Several of the BJP’s long-term objectives, including delimitation and ONOE, require the backing of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. That imperative helps explain the party’s twin-track strategy: winning fresh mandates at the ballot box while simultaneously opening its doors to legislators willing to cross the aisle. Every election victory adds numbers. Every defection brings the two-thirds mark a little closer.

Opposition’s Nightmare

Constitutional amendments are not unusual in India’s parliamentary democracy. More than 100 amendments have been enacted since the Constitution came into force, most after securing broad political consensus across party lines. The amendments the BJP hopes to pursue after securing a two-thirds majority, however, are among the most politically contentious.

Take delimitation, for instance. The proposed increase in the number of Lok Sabha seats has emerged as one of the Opposition’s biggest concerns. Opposition parties argue that redrawing constituencies on the basis of population would disproportionately increase parliamentary representation for northern states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where the BJP has historically enjoyed strong electoral support. By contrast, southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where the BJP continues to struggle electorally, could see their relative influence in Parliament diminish. For many Opposition leaders, the debate is therefore not merely about representation, but about whether a new electoral map could entrench the BJP’s dominance at the Centre for years to come.

During the parliamentary debate on the Delimitation Bill in April, Union Home Minister Amit Shah attempted to break the deadlock by offering a political compromise. He told the House that the government was willing to amend the legislation to ensure a uniform 50 per cent increase in Lok Sabha seats for every state, provided the Opposition agreed to support the Bill. Shah argued that such a formula would protect the interests of southern states by ensuring that none of them lost representation in Parliament.

TDP Parliamentary Party leader Lavu Krishna Devarayalu agrees with Shah. “Either do delimitation purely on Census numbers, which will come out next year and states like ours lose heavily or expand the total strength of the Lok Sabha by 50 per cent so that states do not lose their existing share of representation,” he says. Highlighting that there are constituencies where the population has gone up to 40 lakh and it is becoming extremely difficult for one MP to manage a constituency of that size, he argued that political parties should not oppose delimitation now that the exercise is being taken up.

Samajwadi Party’s Javed Ali claims the Opposition is not against delimitation but stresses that the government must first build consensus before moving ahead with the proposal by calling an all-party meeting.

Kapil Sibal, a former Union minister and now an Independent Rajya Sabha member, thinks otherwise. He is convinced that the BJP’s larger objective lies beyond increasing the number of seats. “The BJP hopes to redraw electoral boundaries through delimitation so that it alters the political balance in its favour,” Sibal tells Outlook. In his view, that amounts to gerrymandering—the practice of redrawing constituency boundaries to confer an electoral advantage on the party in power. He points to Assam as an example, arguing that changes to constituency boundaries in the state has proved to be politically contentious. The new constituencies, Sibal says, have been carved out in a manner that favoured the BJP.

Just like delimitation, ONOE is also a contentious issue. The critics of ONOE argue that synchronising Assembly elections with the Lok Sabha poll could nationalise state elections, allowing national security, welfare schemes and the prime minister’s popularity to overshadow local issues that traditionally shape Assembly contests. They contend that such a shift would disproportionately benefit the BJP, whose electoral machinery and national leadership dominate political discourse during parliamentary elections.

The Arithmetic

Indian parliamentary democracy has never been short of surprises. From the unexpected defeat of Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004 to the close shave in 2024, when a poor performance in Uttar Pradesh left the BJP dependent on allies to return to power, the party has learnt not to take its grip on Delhi for granted.

A senior BJP functionary told Outlook that both the party and the government intend to reintroduce the Delimitation Bill and the Women’s Reservation Bill during the upcoming Monsoon Session. But have the recent defections brought the BJP-led NDA any closer to the numbers required to push through constitutional amendments?

Not quite. In the current 540-member Lok Sabha, a constitutional amendment requires the support of at least 360 MPs if the House is at full strength and every member votes. Even after the recent political realignments, the NDA’s strength stands at around 318, leaving it more than 42 votes short of the required threshold. The number excludes Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party’s (YSRCP) four seats—the party supported the BJP in April outside the alliance.

The arithmetic is no less challenging in the Rajya Sabha, where the alliance also remains well below the special majority.

While the total strength of the Rajya Sabha presently is 242. The NDA has 150 members if allies and independents (seven) are added to the BJP’s tally of 114. It is still short of the two-thirds majority of 160.

The recent defections have undoubtedly strengthened the BJP’s position, but they have not yet delivered the parliamentary dominance required to amend the Constitution.

Yet parliamentary arithmetic is rarely static. Few anticipated that within days of losing power in West Bengal, the TMC would implode, with rebel legislators turning against Banerjee. With the BJP firmly in the ascendant, more and more politicians appear eager to hitch their fortunes to the saffron party, hoping it offers the political lifeline their own parties no longer can.

That, however, is only one part of the BJP’s strategy. Beyond attracting defectors, the party is also relying on parliamentary outreach, says BJP spokesperson and senior Supreme Court advocate Nalin Kohli. “Parliamentary management involves outreach to political parties as well as groups within parties. The fate of any Bill or amendment would ultimately depend on securing the required support from MPs of the NDA and other like-minded members of Parliament,” says Kohli.

Kohli’s confidence appears to stem from the growing strains within the Opposition, particularly among parties that make up the INDIA bloc. The Congress’ decision to support actor Vijay’s fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), enabling it to form the government at the expense of the incumbent Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), has exposed those fault lines. The move drew a sharp reaction from Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of DMK president M.K. Stalin, who said during the party’s introspection meeting that the DMK should “never trust” the Congress again. For the BJP, there is no better opportunity than discord within the Opposition. Every crack in the INDIA bloc widens the government’s room for parliamentary manoeuvre.

The Congress, however, rejects suggestions that the INDIA bloc is on the verge of fragmentation. Congress Rajya Sabha member Pawan Khera tells Outlook that issues such as the special intensive revision of electoral rolls and what he describes as the Election Commission of India’s contentious role in recent state elections have created a common cause that transcends regional rivalries. Those concerns, he argues, will be enough to keep the Opposition united if the government brings the Delimitation Bill back to Parliament.

Even so, the DMK remains central to the parliamentary arithmetic. With 22 MPs in the Lok Sabha and eight in the Rajya Sabha, its support—or even neutrality—could materially alter the government’s prospects on a constitutional amendment. While chief minister Stalin has emerged as one of the BJP’s fiercest critics, the relationship between the two parties has not always been adversarial. Under the late M. Karunanidhi, the DMK was an ally of the BJP-led NDA and served in the Vajpayee government after the 1999 General Elections. Indian coalition politics has long demonstrated that regional parties often calibrate their alliances less around ideology than around political survival and state-specific interests.

That political pragmatism appears to be shaping the BJP’s current strategy as well. According to sources Outlook spoke to, TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, along with a person serving in one of the country’s highest constitutional offices, are the ones who could potentially initiate talks with the DMK leadership in an effort to secure its support for the Delimitation Bill and the Women’s Reservation Bill.  The DMK, however, dismisses any suggestion of supporting the legislation. “We will oppose it whenever this Bill is introduced,” DMK media relations chairman T.K.S. Elangovan tells Outlook. Asked whether the party would consider walking out during the vote, he is unequivocal: “No, no, no. We will be there and vote against it.”

Elangovan says the party’s opposition is rooted in ideology rather than parliamentary tactics. “The BJP is anti-Tamil. They want to impose Hindi on us. That is the first step. They also want to establish this country as a Hindu nation, whereas the Constitution permits citizens to follow any religion,” he says.

India’s Tryst with Amendments

The Constitution of India has never been a static document. Since coming into force in 1950, it has been amended more than a hundred times, each change reflecting the priorities of the government of the day. 

“We have a relatively easy process of amending the Constitution, says senior Supreme Court advocate Shyam Divan “There are jurisdictions like Japan, Australia and the United States where amendment is so difficult that hardly any amendments occur. Those societies learn to work around constitutional provisions without changing them. Our thinking is different: the Constitution is such a long and comprehensive document that it inevitably requires revisiting from time to time,” he adds.

In this journey, some amendments expanded rights; others curtailed them. Some strengthened federalism; others concentrated power at the Centre. Some sought to correct historical inequities; others fundamentally altered the relationship between Parliament, the judiciary and the states. In every case, however, one principle remained constant: the power to reshape the Constitution has belonged to those who command sufficient numbers in Parliament. 

It is this history that explains why the debate over a two-thirds majority evokes both hope and anxiety. Supporters argue that a strong government should possess the numbers needed to implement its electoral mandate without being held hostage by coalition politics. Critics counter that constitutional amendments are meant to command broad political consensus precisely because they alter the rules by which governments themselves are elected and restrained.

The experience of the 42nd Constitutional Amendment remains central to that debate. Enacted during the Emergency in 1976, it significantly strengthened the powers of the Centre, curtailed judicial review, added Fundamental Duties, amended the Preamble and froze the allocation of parliamentary seats among states based on population. Although several of its provisions were later diluted or reversed by the 43rd and 44th Amendments, the episode continues to serve as a reminder of how profoundly a government with overwhelming parliamentary numbers can reshape the constitutional order.

Half a century later, the BJP’s pursuit of a two-thirds majority has reopened a familiar constitutional debate. For its supporters, it represents an opportunity to implement long-pending reforms. For its critics, it raises questions about the concentration of power. As Parliament prepares to revisit some of the country’s most consequential constitutional questions, the numbers may determine what is possible, but the debate will determine how those changes are remembered.