Defectors barred from office

Minority status of Mulayam govt will become a permanent feature

The Constitution amendment Bill to debar defectors from holding office of profit became a law after the Parliament passed it, following the support of the Congress and the CPI(M) in the Rajya Sabha.

The Congress said it was an important step in cleansing the political system. The Bill provides for automatic disqualification of defectors from Parliament and state legislatures.

The law will create a piquant political situation in Uttar Pradesh where Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is sitting pretty with a slender majority and a huge Cabinet (the Bill also restricts the size of the Cabinet but gives governments six months to do so.)

Yadav's position will be untenable if the Congress decides to pull rug from under his feet. And after the passsage of this legislation, Yadav will no longer be able to break away legislators to shore up his position. This means that the minority status of his government will become a permanent feature.

What appears to give the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a leverage is the fact that the BJP holds the post of Speaker occupied by Kesari Nath Tripathi.

That Tripathi is still hearing the cases of defections by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislators to the Yadav camp at the time of the government formation makes the Samajwadi Party government quite vulnerable. In effect, Yadav's sustenance in the government will remain at the mercy of a benign BJP, particularly Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Initiating the debate in the Rajya Sabha, senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee said: "The Bill is an important step towards cleansing the political system, which has gathered a lot of dirt in recent years."

The Bill, which has already been passed by the Lok Sabha, incorporates all the important recommendations of the standing committee including the suggestion do away with jumbo Cabinets by restricting them to 15 per cent of the size of the Lok Sabha or Assemblies.

In case of smaller states, the Cabinet size will be restricted to 12 per cent of the size of the Assembly.

Moving the Bill, Law Minister Arun Jaitley said it incorporated yet another provision that those Cabinets, which were more than 15 per cent of the size of legislatures would be given six months after the legislation came into force, to reduce the size.

Mukherjee said the Constitution makers did not felt the need for such a Bill at that point of time as political morality was high and recalled how luminaries like JB Kripalani had to quit the Congress because of difference of opinion.

On the jumbo Cabinets, he said the need for restricting the number was not felt at the time of Independence and recalled that the chief minister of then Madras State had only seven members in the Cabinet. It was one of the best administered states at that time.

Mukherjee also cited the example of West Bengal, where a coalition of 13 parties in the 1950s had only 15 ministers in the Cabinet although the Assembly's strength was around 240.

Now of 30 states, only three states had Cabinets, which were less than 10 per cent of the strength of respective Assemblies, he said stressing that the provisions of the Bill would ensure that vested interests were not served.

BP Apte (BJP) said the need for this kind of stringent law was a commentary on the political culture in the country and there were Supreme Court judgments on defection following such cases in Manipur and Goa.

The provision giving powers to Speakers to decide on defections should be reconsidered, he said adding merger by smaller parties and independents going scot free after defections should also be looked into.

Rama Shanker Kaushik (Samajwadi Party) said powers of Speakers to decide on defections had not been made clear in the Bill.

The amendment deletes the provision allowing one-third of a legislature party to split without attracting provisions of the anti-defection law.

In the statement of objects and reasons for the Bill, the law minister said this provision for exemption from disqualification in case of splits had come under severe criticism on account of destabilising effect on government.