High time to keep the Speaker out of the loop in adjudicating over the question of disqualification on the score of defection

The anti-defection law has now become the handmaid of the vagaries of the Speaker of the House be it State or Union Legislature who in turn dances to the tune called by his political boss in ruling regime as seen, of the late, in Haryana and Karnataka. Hence, time brooks no delay in amending the Constitution suitably to keep the Speaker out of the loop in adjudicating the question of defection in a given case. The President and the Governor should be vested with the power to decide on disqualification of MPs and MLAs respectively on the score of defection on the binding advice of the Election Commission of India (ECI) a proposal mooted by the ECI and endorsed by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission.

Further, not all is bad with the anti-defection law. The whipping boy the para 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution enabling the merger of a political party, in fact, is highly democratic. It envisages a collaborative and participatory working between the political party concerned and its legislature party consisting of all members of the given House for the time being belonging to that political party in the State Legislature or Parliament whatever may be the case. The law tends to strike a fine balance between interests of political party and the aspirations of the Legislators (denoting the will of the people) comprising the legislature party concerned. The contents and intent of the said law lend emphatic credence to the inference that any decision for such merger can only be taken by the original political party in accordance with the rules thereto as embodied in the constitution of that political party, and to take it further to any logical conclusion must find favour with not less than two-thirds of the elected members of the legislature party concerned. Hence, the contention as being articulated from certain quarters that unilateral decision of the two-third members of the legislature party bypassing the political party ipso facto seals the fate of the latter is untenable. Since there is no direct authoritative ruling of the Apex Court on the para 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution and the vacuum is being rampantly misused/abused by the unscrupulous political parties and politicians, hence, it will be in the fitness of the things to invoke Article 143 of the Constitution to seek the opinion of the Supreme Court through a Presidential reference on the vexed question.