New Delhi: A question in the Lok Sabha last week on whether India has any plans to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation and whether Israel has made such a request has ended up tying the Narendra Modi government and the Bharatiya Janata Party in knots. On Saturday (December 9), Meenakshi Lekhi, a minister of state in the external affairs ministry publicly dissociated herself from her ministry and government’s official view that it does not regard the Palestinian organisation as terrorist.After Lekhi went public to say she had not signed any such answer, the MEA issued an official clarification that a technical error had led to the answer being issued in her name instead of that of her ministerial colleague, V. Muraleedharan.The ministry’s official view and Lekhi’s subsequent actions raise questions about the conduct of the Modi government, about how decisions are made and what its own ministers think about them.How does it matter which of the individual ministers in the same ministry signed an official answer? Is this the respect ministers have for their government’s views?Meenakshi Lekhi is a minister in the same government as the one that has answered the question, asking whether India believed that Hamas was a terrorist organisation. “Designation of an organisation as terrorist is covered under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and declaring any organisation as terrorist is considered as per the provisions of the Act by the relevant government departments,” said the answer by the Ministry of External Affairs to the Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 980, on December 8, 2023.Lekhi, Minister of State for External Affairs no less, distanced herself from the question. “I have not signed any paper with this question and this answer,” she said in response to a post on X (formerly Twitter).A “technical error” could have been sorted out quietly and internally. Did it require Lekhi holding a political press conference at the BJP headquarters?If this is indeed a “technical error” as the Ministry of External Affairs said in its statement soon after Lekhi created a fuss, and held a political press conference against her own ministry and said there would be a hunt for the “culprit”, a press conference suggests dissonance and confusion. Do all ministers not hold the same view as the Union government does? This is a government that prescribes “one” of everything. Surely, all ministers can be held to “one” view on such an important matter? Is ek sarkar, ek jawaab too much to expect?How are decisions made in the Modi government?Lekhi tagged the prime minister and the external affairs minister publicly on X. There was another tweet that asked about the official website of MEA uploading the question. The tweet questioned if Lekhi didn’t prepare the question, who did. Responding to this question, Lekhi said, “An inquiry will reveal the culprit.”V. Muraleedharan serves as the minister of state responsible for Gulf states, excluding Saudi Arabia, in the Ministry of External Affairs. Consequently, queries pertaining to this region typically bear his signature. If Lekhi identified a parliamentary question associated with a portfolio outside her purview, she could easily consult with her colleague looking after that region to pinpoint the ‘mistake’.Lekhi’s public tweets speaks poorly of internal discussion mechanisms within a government that should know better. Coalition governments are sneered at for ministers expressing their own views, contrary to that held by governments. This tells its own story.Inquiry will reveal the culprit @DrSJaishankar @PMOIndia https://t.co/XPpfrlaUQ3— Meenakashi Lekhi (@M_Lekhi) December 8, 2023Does this government believe in collective responsibility? Or not?Article 75(3) of the Indian Constitution spells out collective responsibility in clear and uncertain terms. The clause reads “the Council of Ministers shall be collectively responsible to the House of the People”.Was Lekhi responding to the political embarrassment of publicly saying Hamas is not a terrorist group when her party and even the government has gone out of its way to support Israel’s war on Gaza and the rest of Palestine?As The Wire reported earlier today (December 10), Modi, anxious to keep up a sense of a special relationship with Israel, and especially his discredited counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, is increasingly coming under pressure. Israel’s actions on Gaza and thousands of civilian deaths have led to a sea change in global public opinion on unilaterally supporting Israel.Israel has been urging India to ban Hamas. Recently, its ambassador Naor Gilon had said that with Israel banning terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba, which it did 15 years after the attacks in Mumbai, India should also designate Hamas as a terror group.India has taken an ambiguous stand with regard to Hamas over the years and it is not designated a terrorist group. Something that the reply in the Lok Sabha has also outlined. It has cited the UN as a guide, proscribing organisations that have officially been declared a terrorist organisation by the international body, which does not designate Hamas as a terrorist group.So, despite the “reflexive Hindutva embrace of Zionism” about which much has been visible in the public for a while and documented, it has become difficult for the Modi government to ban Hamas, even if they want to, without seriously jeopardising other important economic and strategic interests that the BJP and this government has in West Asia.Besides, for designated UAPA courts to uphold a ban on Hamas, were it to be banned domestically, India would have to share evidence of involvement of the organisation in terror activities within India. So far, there is nothing to go on.