Cabinet okays move to cap ministry size

The Cabinet has cleared the proposal to amend the Constitution to prevent defectors from holding an office of profit until they've won the next election, and to cap the strength of council of ministers to 15 per cent of the total number of members on the Lok Sabha and state legislatures.

Once this recommendation is made a law, the government will have to prune to 82 the number of ministers, which is currently 86 including the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said the government wanted to pass this Bill in the current session of Parliament.

This will be the 97th Constitution (Amendment) Bill and it incorporates the recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee.

Swaraj said the government had accepted the recommendation of the committee to fix the size of the council of ministers to 15 per cent of the Lower House instead of 10 per cent of the strength of both the Houses.

This was because not all states had an Upper and Lower House. The strength of the council of ministers in small states would be 12 instead of seven as suggested in the original Bill, she said.

The 44-member standing committee on home affairs, headed by Pranab Mukherjee (Congress), in its report had observed that the Bill in its present form suffered from an infirmity to the extent that a loser in any election to Parliament or a state legislature became eligible to be appointed as a minister or to a remunerative political post even though the stigma of defection was not condoned by the electorate.

The proposed legislation aims to do away with the concept of a split in a political party from the 10th Schedule of the Constitution, to check its misuse.

Endorsing the government attempt, the committee had said split in a party for a cause other than ideological, such as situational and motivational, would be prevented, resulting in check of proliferation of political parties.

On the question of the whip issued to check instability in the government, it had said the government might not be physically destabilised but instability would follow when the government failed to ensure safe passage of its legislative business in the House.

Thus, it had felt that legislators could have freedom of speech in the House on a legislation but to ensure stability of the government, it was not desirable to give freedom of vote on the floor of the House.

The committee had said status quo on the issue of whip should be maintained. It had clarified that the existing practice of including ministers in the government from both the Houses of Parliament could continue but for the purpose of limiting the size of the ministry, the strength of lower House should be reckoned.