The INDIA parties on Monday put up a spirited fight against the Delhi Services Bill in the Rajya Sabha, shrugging off insinuations about their grouping being a motley crowd to assert in unison that the draft legislation was being brought in by the Modi government to take over Delhi where the BJP has been routed in six successive Assembly elections since 1998.

At the end of a seven-hour debate, they insisted on a vote and the bill was passed with 131 MPs voting for it and 102 against. At least three ailing Opposition MPs, including former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, were brought to the House to vote.

The bill has been brought to replace an ordinance the Modi government promulgated to undo a unanimous verdict of the Supreme Court restoring the Delhi government’s control over the bureaucracy.

Initiating the discussion, Abhishek Manu Singhvi of the Congress said this is being done by a “control freak sarkar (government) whose visiting card is vendetta, identity badge is of a graceless and fuming loser, whose approach is to control, control and control everything by hook or crook, and usually more by crook than by hook”.

Stating that the bill violates the basic structure of the Constitution, Singhvi — like many others in the Opposition after him — warned the Biju Janata Dal and the YSR Congress that “some day this anti-federal knock will be at your door”; using Martin Niemoller’s poem “First they came…” poem to nudge the two parties to reconsider their support to the bill.

Without naming either party, DMK’s T. Siva urged them to oppose the bill or they might end up facing a similar situation as the AAP government in Delhi.

AAP’s Raghav Chadha called the bill a “political fraud” and “constitutional sin’’, adding that it was an insult to BJP stalwarts Atal Behari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, Madan Lal Khurana, Arun Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj who had all fought for full statehood to Delhi.

Javed Ali Khan of the Samajwadi Party said the bill was a clear acknowledgement by the Modi government that the BJP is not returning to power in Delhi anytime in the near future.

Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “child of federalism”, Trinamul’s Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien had the BJP benches up in arms when he threw light on how the government treated violence in Opposition-ruled states differently from similar incidents in BJP-ruled states. “How many delegations have you sent to UP or Manipur?’’ he asked to loud protests from the BJP benches.

The BJD and YSR responded to the jibes from the INDIA parties differently. While the BJD’s Sasmit Patra kept his cool and maintained that his party was supporting Parliament’s legislative competence to enact laws, YSR Congress leader Vijay Sai Reddy took potshots at the AAP in particular.

With several references to the basic structure of the Constitution, former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi — delivering his maiden speech in the House since being nominated in 2020 — sought to address it by saying the basic structure doctrine has a debatable jurisprudential basis.

While replying to the debate, Union home minister said the BJP has no need to capture power and there is no gainsaying that the same will happen in Odisha or Andhra Pradesh, pointing out that the constitutional arrangement for Delhi is different.