Fifteen years can completely alter India’s political landscape, but they sometimes leave Parliament’s arguments almost unchanged. In 2011, the BJP, then in the Opposition, brought Parliament to a standstill after police lathi-charged Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists marching towards Parliament during the Monsoon Session. The protesters had turned violent near Parliament Street, but the Opposition’s focus was not on the conduct of the protesters; it was on ministerial accountability. The BJP insisted that the then Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram accept moral responsibility for the police action and resign.
Fast forward to 2026 and history appears to have come full circle. After students marching towards Parliament on July 20 were stopped with lathi charges, tear gas and other crowd-control measures, the Congress and other Opposition parties have demanded the resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The political roles have reversed, but the central question remains exactly the same: Should the Home Minister be held accountable for the actions of the police under his ministry?
The similarities are striking.
In 2011, then BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain declared, “We want Chidambaram’s resignation and there will be no compromise on the issue.” Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj argued that law and order falls under the Home Ministry, making the Home Minister answerable for the police action. BJP leader Gopinath Munde similarly maintained that the moral responsibility for the crackdown rested with Chidambaram.
The uproar inside Parliament was quite dramatic. BJP MPs rushed towards the Chairman’s podium, raised slogans demanding the Home Minister’s resignation and repeatedly disrupted proceedings, insisting that Parliament first discuss why protesters had been cane-charged.
Today, the script is remarkably familiar, except the cast has changed.
The BJP now occupies the Treasury benches while the Congress sits in the Opposition, raising questions over the police response to the July 20 student march and demanding that Amit Shah accept responsibility. The demand mirrors almost word for word the position the BJP itself took when it was out of power.
As Rahul Gandhi prepares to speak in Parliament today, it would not be surprising if he invokes the BJP’s own arguments from 2011. The statements made then by senior BJP leaders provide ready-made ammunition for today’s Opposition, allowing it to argue that the principle of ministerial accountability should not depend on which party occupies the government benches.
The comparison is ultimately less about whether the two protests were identical and more about the consistency of political principles. Every Opposition tends to demand accountability from the government of the day. The real test is whether those standards remain the same after the Opposition becomes the government.