The dismissal of the disqualification petitions against the 12 MLAs is seen as a setback to clean and ethical functioning by our MLAs. Defections have become a curse to democracy in our tiny State. The State was expecting the Honourable High Court to lay down the threshold of political morality, but the High Court says that even the highest court has laid down that it is for the legislature to draw that line.
The issue of whether two-third members of a legislature party could merge without a reference to the original political party has been answered by holding that ‘legislature party’ and ‘original party’ are two distinct entities recognized in the anti-defection law and the merger is only to protect the member of the house from disqualification. The original political party (from which 2/3 members merged) would continue to be dealt with by the Election Commission and the ‘deemed merger’ of the legislature contemplated in the law would have no bearing on the party recognized by the Election Commission.
The court asserted that “the perception of the legislature regarding the political proprieties and moral standards were recognized by the Supreme Court while emphasizing that there is a need to provide floor crossing as a basis of honest dissent”.
The anti-defection law brought in bulk defections while outlawing individual defections through the escape route of split and merger to protect dissent in parties and against party bossism. The law leading to bulk defections was studied by the law commission and in it’s report in 1999 opined that splits and mergers are not required for political process and pluralism in society. They can happen once the parliament is dissolved and said that mergers, splits, formation of new political parties can go on but that shall not be reflected in the house. In 1999, while recommending the deletion of the split, they also recommended the deletion of Para 4 (merger) in the interest of maintenance of proper political status in the house and also to minimize the complications arising out of the issue. The recommendation was to replace the original political party with a “political party”. If the law commission’s recommendations were accepted, our MLAs would be deprived of the opportunities they have enjoyed!
Political parties are essential and integral part of democracy and particularly parliamentary democracy. The shifting of loyalties for money and power has disrupted our parliamentary democracy and people’s mandates are disrespected like never before. Goa and other smaller States have become a laboratory for shifting of loyalties.
The curse of defections started in our country in the year 1967. In Goa, it started even before. It took 18 years for the parliament to bring in legislation to outlaw defections, but in aid of internal democracy in political parties, split and merger was retained. It took another 18 years to plug the escape route of bulk defections through split. It is our misfortune that merger was retained. Another 18 years have passed since then.
The way governments collapsed and new governments are formed through the process of shifting of loyalties, the casualty, is the will of the people and democracy itself. Democracy is getting reduced to mathematical numbers where the elected give no respect for the people and in the past three decades, the citizens are taking this assault lying down.
As the higher judiciary waits for the threshold of the political morality is to be laid down by law, the ball goes into the parliamentary arena unless the Supreme Court steps in to give a new interpretation and new dimension in favour of clean and ethical functioning by our legislators.
(The writer is a practising lawyer and a political commentator)
