NPF welcomes SC ruling on anti-defection law

NPF has welcomed Supreme Court’s (SC) ruling on the anti-defection law and for directing Parliament to rethink over the power of Speaker belonging to a particular political party in deciding petitions seeking disqualification of lawmakers.

With SC’s directive, NPF said the Parliament was to set up an independent tribunal to decide disqualification petitions within reasonable time to give teeth to the anti-defection law, instead of leaving it to speakers who continued to remain political party members either de jure or de facto.

In this regard, the opposition party urge Parliament to do away with quasi-judicial authority of a speaker in matters of disqualification petitions, as this system had proved a failure and ineffective as the speaker also belonged to a particular political party and hence could be influenced by political interests. In many cases, the disqualification petition to be decided within a reasonable period of time lingered on for indefinite period, it added.

According to the party, the classic example of unreasonable and delay at hand was the disqualification petition against seven of its MLAs that had been pending at Nagaland Legislative Assembly speaker’s court for the past 10 months, which it said warranted early disposal as per the directive of SC in Manipur as the case was similar.

In the recent case of Manipur Congress MLAs’ disqualification case, the three-judge bench of the apex court had directed the speaker of Manipur Legislative Assembly to dispose off the case within four weeks, failing which the petitioner could approach the high court (HC). In general terms, the apex court had given direction that speakers should not sit over disqualification petition for more than three months

NPF said it was of the strong view that this judgment of Supreme Court would compel all political parties to have a serious thought for giving effect to the provisions of Tenth Schedule in its true earnest.

The party also urged Parliament to seriously consider, as advised by SC, amending the constitution to substitute speakers of Lok Sabha and State Assemblies under Tenth Schedule with a “Permanent Tribunal”, which could be headed by a retired SC judge or a retired chief justice of a HC or some independent mechanism to ensure that such disputes were decided swiftly and impartially.