​Taken to task: on the Supreme Court and defections

The issue of defections in Legislative Assemblies has become a vexed one in public life in recent years. Ruling parties — the Bharatiya Janata Party in particular — have adopted an unabashed approach to augment their legislative support by encouraging defections. A commonly used modus operandi — used egregiously in Manipur in the late 2010s and later in Maharashtra — involves the Speaker, invariably from the ruling party, sitting on disqualification petitions from Opposition parties against legislators who have defected. Some defectors have even been sworn in as Ministers, pending adjudication on their party-switching by the Speaker. Many States have seen the unedifying sight of mass defections to the ruling party just after elections, making a mockery of the democratic exercise. The latest is the situation in Telangana where the petitions filed by the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) in March-April 2024, to disqualify 10 of its legislators who defected to the Congress, were notified by the Speaker only in January this year. The Supreme Court, hearing a petition by the BRS seeking timely action by the Speaker, has rightly observed that it was not “powerless” if a Speaker chose to remain indecisive. Justice B.R. Gavai’s observation that the courts cannot tell a Speaker how to decide, but that they could ask the Speaker to decide within a reasonable period, is a rational one.

A five-judge Constitution Bench, in May 2023, had reposed its faith in the Speaker’s “propriety and impartiality” to decide on defections, but “within a reasonable period”. Flowing from this judgment, the Court had, in October 2023, fixed a deadline for the Maharashtra Speaker to decide defection pleas from the Opposition after the undue delay by him in hearing them. Yet, the issue is persistent. This is inevitable as Speakers are invariably elected from ruling parties and rarely act in a non-partisan manner, despite the expectation that they will do so. In 2020, the Court had asked Parliament to amend the Constitution to strip Legislative Assembly Speakers of their exclusive power to decide upon whether legislators should be disqualified or not under the Tenth Schedule which frames the anti-defection law. It had also asked for an independent tribunal, instead of the Speaker, to be appointed for the task. No such action has been taken by Parliament since then and the problem of defections going unaddressed by Speakers within a reasonable time frame persists. If the Court forces the hand of the Speaker in Telangana, it might be one more blow for decisive action. But the scourge of defections and how it is dealt with will remain as long as voters do not punish those who indulge in such practices.