It’s difficult to say off the top of one’s head how many times Congress MLAs have been suspended from the Gujarat Assembly over the past two decades. That’s the legacy Narendra Modi has now carried to Parliament, which has witnessed a dramatic rise in the suspension of Opposition MPs since 2014.

Monday’s suspension of 78 members from both Houses of Parliament — after another 14 were suspended last week — has left political observers wondering whether this marks a step up for the trend of intolerance that India’s polity has witnessed over the past few years.

As Parliament shifted to a new home earlier this year, the Prime Minister had spoken of awakening a “new consciousness” — but this seems not to have included the acceptance of dissent.

Legislators have been suspended in Gujarat for an assortment of reasons — for demanding a debate on floods; for seeking answers from the chief minister on critical issues; for accusing the government of involvement in scams and providing undue help to corporate houses; for raising the subject of an agitation by government employees; for seeking discussions on how an impostor got into a police academy and on a famed temple changing its traditional prasad; even for protesting Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from Parliament.

As for Parliament, Opposition MPs have been suspended more than 70 times since 2019. Many of them have sat in protest outside for days together, creating the spectacle of elected representatives spending nights on the Parliament grounds.

While Opposition members’ grouse should normally have been directed at the presiding officers — the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairperson — few of them are in any doubt that the serial suspensions are a brazen manifestation of Modi’s “intolerant politics”.

“This is an extension of the Gujarat model, in which the Opposition is seen as a hurdle,” Congress Rajya Sabha member Shaktisinh Gohil, who has seen Modi closely while working as leader of the Opposition in Gujarat, told The Telegraph.

“The suspension of MLAs was routine in Gujarat. Once the entire Opposition was suspended during the budget session. The leader of the Opposition is never suspended anywhere, but in Gujarat I was suspended.”

He added: “Modi doesn’t want communication with the Opposition. He sees them as the enemy and bulldozes all dissenting voices. Samvad nahin, sangharsh (Not dialogue but conflict) — that’s his style.”

Congress communications chief Jairam Ramesh described the suspensions as a “bloodbath”, and postulated “MODI” as an acronym to be expanded as “murder of democracy in India”.

He asserted that Opposition members were making a perfectly legitimate demand for a statement from the Union home minister on the December 13 breach of Parliament’s security.

Convention suggests that the government has an obligation to make statements on critical issues in the House when Parliament is in session.

“Democracy has been suspended. Tanashahi ka doosra naam ModiShahi hai (Autocracy by another name is Modi-cracy),” Ramesh said.

Two words had reverberated in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha before the suspensions as defiant members shouted slogans and displayed placards. These were “garima” and “maryada” — dignity and discipline — hallmarks of parliamentary proceedings and behaviour.

Asked whether the “garima” and “maryada” of Parliament were only about order and calm in the House, RJD Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha, who too was suspended on Monday, said: “That’s an authoritarian interpretation of parliamentary decorum.”

Jha said: “Any attempt to crush democratic dissent is the worst form of violation of parliamentary dignity. Questioning the government is the duty of the Opposition and fixing accountability is the essential spirit of parliamentary work.

“We were not fighting in personal interest. Parliamentary democracy is not like corporate deals, done secretly and silently. We have to fight for the people’s rights and the larger public good, and that’s called the noise of democracy.”

He added: “The narrow view of dignity is unacceptable; debate and dissent are key ingredients of parliamentary dignity.”

In a post on X, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said: “First, intruders attacked Parliament. Then Modi Government attacking Parliament and democracy. All democratic norms are being thrown into the dustbin by an autocratic Modi Government by suspending 47 MPs.

“We have two simple and genuine demands — 1. The Union Home Minister should make a statement in both Houses of Parliament on the inexcusable breach in the Parliament security. 2. A detailed discussion should be held on the same.

“The Prime Minister can give an interview to a newspaper; Home Minister can give interviews to TV channels. But, they have zero accountability left to Parliament — which represents the people of India! With an Opposition-Less Parliament, the Modi Government can now bulldoze important pending legislations, crush any dissent, without any debate.”