anti defection

We need to relax the anti-defection law. Restricting the rigours of the party whip would ensure that every government strives not only for cross-party consensus on legislation, but also reaches out to individual lawmakers rather than just their leaderships

The original Tenth Schedule, of 1985 however, failed to take into account the ingenuity of immorality that bedevilled some of the eminences that adorned our legislatures. While penalising individual acts of defection, it recognised the principle of splits whereby if one-third of the members of a legislative party broke away and formed a separate group or joined another political party, they could continue as members of the legislature.

Setting the one-third bar was explained in paragraph three of the Tenth Schedule in terms of “honest dissent” — that is, a critical mass of numbers would be swayed not by monetary considerations or the perks of office but by deep ideological or policy differences. In reality, individual defections turned into a got converted into a mass-scale malady.

The National Democratic Alliance government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee sought to address this aberration through the Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003. Essentially what this constitutional amendment did was raise the wholesale defection bar from one-third to two-thirds.

Lawmaking in India, far from being a consultative and transparent process that takes all stakeholders on board, essentially remains a bureaucratic function. On top of it is the party whip, which directs its members which way to vote practically on each and every bill. This enforced adherence to the party line means that a member invariably ends up voting for a bill if he/she is on the Treasury benches and against a bill if he/she is in the Opposition, with the odd spectacle of parliamentarians sometimes voting against a legislative instrument which they had supported previously, depending on whether their party occupies the Opposition or Treasury benches.

An unfortunate trend that has recently manifested itself is the use of House majorities to get even Private Members’ Bills defeated at the introduction stage. It restricts whatever little space individual members have left for legislative activity. The argument of the establishment (the collective of political parties) that standing committees of Parliament serve that very function doesn’t hold, because an MP only serves on one standing committee and the practical possibility of getting onto even one more committee is almost non-existent

All this needs to change so that the empowerment of the individual can coexist with the imperatives of political stability and public probity. Some years back I had introduced a Private Member’s Bill entitled the Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2010 (Amendment to the 10th Schedule) that lapsed, without a discussion, on my joining the government in 2012. The core provisions of the Bill envisaged that whips be issued only for those legislative items that threaten the stability of government. It would perhaps be instructive to reproduce the salient aspects of the Statement of Objects and Reasons of that lapsed bill: “After quarter of a century of the enactment of the Tenth Schedule, it needs certain adaptations and further strengthening so as to be of greater relevance to our democratic process today. The disqualification of a member of a House should be only on the grounds that if he votes or abstains from voting in the House with regard to a Confidence Motion, No-confidence Motion, Adjournment Motion, Money Bill or financial matters contrary to the direction issued in this behalf by the party to which he belongs to and in no other case.”

A classic case of satan reciting the bible. When his part was in power for the last 10 years, he has not thought of writing such a thought provoking self conscientious article perhaps he must be very busy in his duties as a Minister. Also he has forgotten such conscientious acts to be performed when his party showed callous respect the Constitution and over throwing many democratically elected Governments. Probably he must have a selective amnesia or his intellect conscience was sleeping and woken up after 2014. Anyway, let it wake till 2019 atleast.