On the ninth invocation of Article 123, the Citizenship (Amendment) Ordinance, by the Modi government in a little over seven months, SMU Assistant Professor of Law Shubhankar Dam said that the past 15 years or so have actually seen a “rather significant decline” in the number of ordinances. Assistant Prof Dam pointed out that, contrary to public perception, “ordinances infected governance in India long before Parliament took a disruptive turn; the Nehru-Gandhi years were especially damaging.”