The Narendra Modi government’s defeat over the Constitution Amendment three-Bills package to get new rules for the next round of delimitation and make major changes by inflating Lok Sabha seats to 850 seats minus any safeguards for states that have made the demographic transition has at least nine significant political takeaways.1. A Lok Sabha defeat hurts the BJP: A defeat in the Lok Sabha – which has been unthinkable for the BJP ever since its remarkable ascent to power in Delhi with 282 seats in 2014 – is significant. The Rajya Sabha has seen pushbacks, and also one opposition amendment to the President’s address being voted in March 2015. The BJP took to terming bills as ‘money bills’ to escape scrutiny, but this is a first in the Lok Sabha, and only the second time this century after 2002, for a government bill like this to be defeated.2. Modi government’s aura of invincibility hit: The Modi government likes to argue in court and elsewhere, while trying to rework fundamentals of the Constitution via the judiciary, that only parliament represents the ‘will of the people’ and should be treated as supreme, not ‘constitutional values’. This rests on its sense of invincibility, based on its Lok Sabha numbers. This is an aura which Modi has tried hard to switch back on, after the 2024 loss in the Lok Sabha, by swearing in the same cabinet and tightening its grip over institutions meant to otherwise push back on executive overreach and excesses.Last week’s developments have eroded that carefully cultivated aura of the Modi government.3. Opposition matters: There was a belief that the opposition does not matter, despite BJP having just 240 seats. The idea that the opposition can be ‘managed’ via blatantly partisan presiding officers or by talking to different parties separately, and holding no all-party meetings, was also shattered as the opposition, including parties dominant in the Hindi belt most likely to benefit from the hurried expansion of the Lok Sabha proposed, stood their ground.4. Amit Shah’s Chanakya-giri hit by chronology of events: It knocked numbers off Amit Shah’s ratings as top pusher for the Modi government. Shah’s moves have usually succeeded in bamboozling the Lok Sabha, first witnessed on August 5, 2019 when a no-discussion, no-information, shock and awe approach under the cover of ‘national security’ worked, to split a state and turn it into two union territories got through. After being reduced to a minority in the Lok Sabha, the government tried again to bring a bill which would enable removals and arrests of chief ministers on the basis of ‘corruption’ charges, but that push did not succeed and the bill went to a committee. This time, the move was properly defeated.5. Personal political credibility of India’s two most powerful leaders took a beating: Narendra Modi and Amit Shah both “assured” the House that they would not hurt the interests of states, but the words carried no weight or heft. After trying to be conciliatory, once BJP did not get its way, Modi was back to hectoring and in a 30-minute ‘address’, named Congress 59 times.Transcript of PM Modi’s address to the nation.6. Twisting rules and procedures not always possible: The conviction that the BJP can tinker and meddle with parliamentary procedure as per its will and get away, was shattered. The attempt to reduce Parliament to an extension of the executive is clear, with no deputy speaker of the Lok Sabha since 2019, a first in Indian history. The violation of parliamentary procedures and norms is clear with what happened in the case of the three agricultural bills in 2020. Most recently, in the case of the CAPF bills being fast-tracked, calling for the waiver of rule 116 that demanded time and deliberation could also not be resorted to, as the political will of the House stood like a wall.7. Ideological setback: The proceedings were intended to gift the BJP a quick expansion of seats and entrench its political domination without debating how it hurts other regions. But the cover of ‘women’s reservation expedited’ did not help and the BJP was outed for wanting to hurt other regions.Its blueprint for the future, which involves a systematic reshaping of the Indian polity, making it easier to perpetuate its rule under a Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan scheme of things, and without any discussion about it to prevent resentments being articulated, suffered a serious setback. This was not meant only as a tactic but to suit a larger goal of diminishing states; that has not been possible.8. Third axis of region and language activated: Religion and caste remain the competing axes around which politics has been played, despite the BJP’s struggles to subsume caste. A third axis, about language, region and diversity may have been ignited through this debate and have the potential to colour all future debates as the BJP struggles to somehow try and win new regions.The paradox is that despite its overweening hold on the cow belt between 2014 and 2023, 2024 was a blow with serious setbacks for the BJP in UP, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. Attempts to extend its political influence beyond these regions, in the south and in the east, may be hobbled by sentiment unleashed by the debate. A resurgent BJD hitting at the BJP in the state is only one example.Language riots and divisions from the 1950s, before the linguistic division of states took place, may be a distant memory, but faultlines can quickly resurface if teased and tortured.9. Inability to control/dominate the narrative: The ‘narrative war’ is something the BJP always seems complacent of winning, but sending BJP women workers, including the BJP’s only woman chief minister, Rekha Gupta, to Rahul Gandhi’s house only ended up elevating his stature. Exactly like the BJP had to resort to extreme drives to curb the online memes, khi-khi jokes and toons, to fightback the mockery of Modi personally for vishwaguru and other foreign policy misadventures, BJP may again resort to draconian moves to somehow try and rework the narrative game this time around.There is no data yet, but live comments as Modi was speaking on Saturday night should serve as a huge warning to the NDA. There are some very basic questions the BJP has not been able to answer: Why did it not implement women’s reservation before 2024? Why is it the party with the lowest proportion of women MPs? And why did what the prime minister and home minister say in parliament not match the text of the Bills?For a party used to getting its way while playing fast and loose with facts, not being able to silence these questions, despite its hold on big media, both TV and most newspapers, is a hit. So has the image of the Modi regime being invincible.