The Absurdity Of The Anti-Defection Law

Context: The Anti-defection law is proving to be detrimental to legislatures' functioning in holding the executive accountable and imparting stability to government.

Issues with the Anti-defection Law:

• Not limited to confidence or money bills (quasi-confidence motion): goes against the concept of Representative Democracy - 
  • It applies to all votes, Bill, even applies to Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils, which have no say in the government's stability.
• Broken chain of accountability: legislators are made accountable primarily to the party.
  • This is opposed to Representative Democracy, where the legislator is accountable to voters, and the government is accountable to legislators.
• Eroding position of legislatures: as the core role of an MP to examine and decide on a policy, Bills and budgets are side­lined, weakening the accountability mechanism.
• Against the intention of framers of the Constitution: B R Ambedkar preferred accountability over stability.
• Inducing instability by exploiting loopholes: 
  • Members prefer to resign rather than vote against the party to overrule the question of defection. (which would cost them ministerial post otherwise)
  • Questionable role of Speaker: who has delayed decisions to retain the defected members
    • Supreme Court ruled that Speaker has to decide in three months, but not clear what would happen if a Speaker does not do so.
  • Based on flawed premise that the anti-defection law is needed to punish legislators who betray the mandate given by the voters.
    • However, many of the defectors in States such as Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have been re­elected in the by­polls (held due to their disqualification).

Way Forward:

• Intra-Party reforms: If the stability of government is an issue due to people defecting from their parties, the answer is for parties to strengthen their internal system
  • They should attract members on the basis of ideology and must have systems for people to rise within the party hierarchy on their capabilities (rather than inheritance).