Time has come to revisit the 10th schedule of the Constitution

Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday said that "time has come to revisit the 10th schedule of the Constitution". Vice President underlined the need to revisit the 10th schedule which is also known as Anti-Defection Law. He further said "we should discuss this and come to a conclusion that legislatures are for debate and discussion without disruption. Credibility, capability and capacity should be the yard stick for anyone to enter legislature and not Caste, Cash and Criminality." 

What is 10th schedule ? What is history of Anti Defection Law?

This was conceived during the period which was famous for "aaya ram gaya ram". We had instabled government and coalitions. This was around the time of mid 80's when Rajiv Gandhi was Prime Minister, the first of the Anti Defection law came which insisted that one-third members of Parliament  are required to change the party in order to remain member of Parliament. Rajiv Gandhi had just got elected, and he had huge majority but that time many states had Congress Government, but they were facing problem of instabilities.

In between 1985 and 2003, the minority Government of Narasimha Rao gained majority over those five years by taking groups from Janta Dal, then there was JMM BRIBERY CASE in which black money was deposited into the bank accounts of MPs. This was the minority Government of Narasimha Rao came into power with majority.

Then NDA came with an improvement in this Anti Defection Law. Finally amendment was done that two-third(2/3rd) members of the Parliament have to merge with another party in order to save their seats if they want to leave their party to which they belong to. The decision of Speaker shall be final.

What aspects of the 10th schedule need further Scrutiny?

One of the Important thing which requires Judicial Scrutiny is ground of disqualifications and defection under para 2 of the 10th schedule.

The second clause of this paragraph says: if any member of parliament  abstains from voting or vote against the official mandate that is given by WHIP of the party then this qualifies as ground for disqualification.

This level of fear on the elected representative is something which we have to think about. 

EXAMPLE: suppose the party take position that is different from the position that it had promised to the electorate in the part of its manifesto and there is a representative who won because of this promise. In this situation even if that representative abstains from voting because party is going against its manifesto, he would be seen as defecting and this abstention would be ground for disqualification.

The second thing needs to be amended is the discretionary power of the Speaker should be limited.