Indian political disease

 When the Anti Defection Law was enacted by the Rajiv Gandhi Congress government in 1985, it was to end the Indian political disease known a ‘aya ram and gaya ram’. Under the Law, those elected members can escape disqualification if they constitute 1/3rd of the total strength of members in their party. However, the quorum was found to be not difficult to fulfil and so political instability continued under the law. In order to put an end to loophole, the law was amended in 2003 where the quorum to cause a split was raised from 1/3rd of total members to 2/3rd to cause a split. The amendment also restricted the number of ministers in a cabinet. The Anti Defection Law has become almost redundant when the elected members continue to indulge destabilising governments.Two aspects arise in such a scenario- dissidents escape disqualification by fulfilling the required quorum of ⅔ of the total members of their party. Even after fulfilling the required quorum, the speaker, who acts in a biased manner, disqualifies some of them so as to reduce the number required as quorum. This facilitates the invocation of clauses under the Anti Defection Law against the dissidents. Both ways, the Anti Defection Law becomes ineffective and the treatment becomes worse than the cure. In recent years after BJP came to power at the Centre, it has devised an ingenuous way to beat the Anti Defection Law by having defectors resign from their parties and the assembly and then rewarding their treachery with ministerial berths. These defectors then contest by-elections. This happened in Karnataka on two occasions and now likely to be replicated in Madhya Pradesh, where the Congress-led coalition finds itself on its way out after 22 rebels fled with Jyotiraditya Scindia, who has since defected to the BJP for getting Rajya Sabha seat and a ministerial berth in the Modi cabinet. The rebels have sent in their papers to the Madhya Pradesh assembly speaker but the latter has only accepted the resignations of six ministers and Scindia loyalists. In Karnataka rebel MLAs from Congress and JDS resigned from their respective parties and the assembly and defected to BJP. They later contested the by-elections and won their seats and appointed as ministers. Thus BJP has a stable strength after a successful horse trading. In Madhya Pradesh, a similar spate of resignations by 22 MLAs has rocked the Congress in Madhya Pradesh, where the Governor has asked the Kamal Nath government to face the floor test, even as senior BJP leader Shivraj Singh Chouhan has sought the Supreme Court’s intervention. In the past, BJP used to look down on defectors. However, the saffron party has shed all inhibitions in embracing rebels from other parties across several states such as Uttarakhand, UP, Goa, Haryana, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and those accused in various cases in Assam, West Bengal etc. It is a shame that dissidents and turncoats are still considered valuable assets by a political party that boasts of being a party with a difference. The Anti Defection Law needs to be amended to bar defectors who join other parties and get re-elected, from being made ministers for at least five years. This is to ensure that their ‘dissidence’ or ‘rebellion’ was issue-based and not driven by greed for power and position.