Do not weaken the anti-defection law

News: The political crisis in Maharashtra again created the debate on anti-defection law. Further, the Supreme Court intervention gave undue advantage to the dissident legislators.

What is anti-defection law?

Supreme Court of India has described the anti-defection law as “constitutional correctives against a legislatively perceived political evil of unprincipled defections induced by the lure of office and monitory inducements”.

Initially, there were two exceptions provided in the schedule which would exempt a legislator from disqualification.

1) A split in their original political party resulted in the formation of a group of legislators. If the group consisted of one-third of such legislators of that party, they were exempted from disqualification.

This exception was deleted from the schedule through the Constitution Amendment Act of 2003 because of the frequent misuse of this provision.

2) ‘Merger’ can be invoked when the original political party of a legislator merges with another party and not less than two-thirds of its legislators agree to such a merger.

The ‘Merger’ exception contained in paragraph four of the schedule has been taken recourse to by a large number of legislators across States and even in Parliament to defect to the ruling party.

What are the judicial interventions on Anti-defection law-related issues?

Girish Chodankar vs The Speaker, Goa State Legislative the Bombay High Court held that the merger of two-thirds of Members of the Legislative Assembly is deemed to be the merger of the original party.

In Ravi S. Naik vs Union of India (1994), the Supreme Court clarified on voluntarily given up the membership of the party. The court had said, “an inference can be drawn from the conduct of a member that he has voluntarily given up the membership of the party to which he belongs.”

In Kihoto Hollohan case (1993) the court held that judicial review cannot be available prior to the making of a decision by the Speaker nor at an interlocutory stage of the proceeding. Giving longer time to the dissidents to submit replies is contrary to this decision.

The law, though not perfect, is a serious attempt to strengthen the moral content of democracy. The nation expects better compliance of the law by the lawmakers. The anti-defection law needs to be strengthened and not weakened.

Source: The post is based on the article “Do not weaken the anti-defection law” published in “The Hindu” on 1^st July 2022.