The Anti-Defection Bill was passed in 1985 when Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister with marathon debates because of rising public opinion for such a law. The Anti-Defection Bill was passed in good faith to stop MLAs and MPs from leaving one party to join another. But to the surprise of everyone in the country the first defection was engineered in Goa and after that there were many defections. Defections took place 21 times and the number of defectors was 80. In 2002 the BJP had 11 defectors with them more than their own party after that we have seen many defections and recently in two assembly elections we have seen 10 MLAs and 8 MLAs defect from the Congress to the BJP respectively.. We need a more stringent law if democracy has to survive whereby no MLA or MP must be allowed to defect to another party after the election process is over for 5 years. If this law is enforced than we will never have defections in the country and horse trading will be out of question.
