Anti Defection Law

“Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram”

Is quiet a famous phrase isn’t it?

But why and how exactly this phrase is related to our polity let’s try to understand that a little bit. In 1967, a congress MLA from Haryana Gaya Lal, changed parties thrice in a fortnight first from the Indian National Congress to Janata dal then back to Indian National Congress and within nine hours again Janata dal .  Due to this incident then Congress leader Rao Birender Singh declared AAYA RAM, GAYA RAM, and even today if you search google for GAYA LAL, the first thing which appears is a cartoon or joke related to “AAYA RAM, GAYA RAM” .

But as much as this event seems funny and became subject to numerous jokes and cartoons, this became a serious issue leading to instability, frequent floor crossing, turncoating, and rise in number of betrayals. To prevent such events from happening again and again some measure has to be taken, and then came , ANTI DEFECTION LAW . The 10th schedule was inserted into our constitution in 1987. This sought to limit such frequent defections in India.

Initially to tackle this bane of political defections during the 4th Lok Sabha elections in 1967, a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Y.B Chavan. This committee submitted their report favoring ANTI DEFECTION LAW, but it wasn’t implemented then. In 1977-79 when for the first time non congress government led by Morarji Desai won in center but was driven out of power due to 76 parliamentary defections, it raised an alarm and caused a great instability until in 1979 when Rajiv Gandhi won with full majority. But Whenever there was congress in center, the regional government fell due to defections. With rising public opinions Rajiv Gandhi purposed the new anti-defection law and after long debates the bill got approved and came into effect on 18th march 1985.

The law laid down the process for disqualifying the elected member for the remaining term, who defected either by resigning the party ,by defying the party whip on any issue or being absent on crucial votes can lead to disqualification due to defection.  

But as we know EXCEPTIONS ARE ALWAYS THERE, in this circumstance also there are some. According to this law a legislature can change their party without the fear of disqualification if their party is merging into or with another party and if two third of its members are in favor of the merge. In this case neither the members who merge nor the members who decide to stay with the original party would face disqualification.

Now, to make this law more effective an amendment was proposed to the tenth schedule in 2003.A committee was set up under the leadership of Pranab Mukherjee, proposing that the exception provided by allowing a split, granted in paragraph three of the Schedule, was being grossly exploited, causing multiple divisions in various political parties. Further, the committee observed, the lure of personal gain played a significant aspect in defections and resulted in political horse trading (horse trading in political reference means vote trading). The amendment also specifies that the minimum number of ministers in states and UTs should not exceed 15% of the total number of the members in that particular house.

This law seeks to provide stable government but however this law also restricts the legislature to use his conscience ,judgement and interests in his electorate, and are allowed to vote only according to what their leader thinks, despite of what actually his constituents would like him to vote for .Basically the member cant go against the majority of his party, even if his electorate wont be getting any benefit from it.

Anti-defection law was very necessary but even today our representatives are defecting from their parties due to various causes. Anti-defection law has come into force once again in Rajasthan where congress MLA Sachin pilot is being charged for defection by his party, which shows that maybe the cases of defection are not as frequent as before but MLAs MPs are still defecting from their own parties due to personal selfish agendas and are still causing instability.

Sources :

• Wikipedia
• PRS legislative research 

–Bharti Sharma