MAKING AN ASS OF THE LAW

The current state of the anti-defection law is affecting democracy itself. It is time to completely overhaul the system

- ABHISHEK SINGHVI

UNFORTUNATELY, TALKING ABOUT the Tenth Schedule and defections forces me to use the Shakespearean adage, “the law is an ass”. We, the operators of the Tenth Schedule, and that means all stakeholders and not just politicians, have actually made it an ass. If I tell you the kind of jugaads we have adopted on the subject of defections, you will actually start laughing. And it would be really comic, were it not tragic.

If Gaya Lal was alive today, he would go and jump off a cliff for not having thought of any of these things!

Let me give you a few examples that may shock you. They may amuse you, but, above all, they will tell you all about our great genius to render non-functional something created with the highest ideals, distort something intended to be noble and high.

First is a fundamental question about the speaker’s post. We have adopted these things from Britain. In the old days, speakers were elected unopposed and had credibility by virtue of being genuinely unaffiliated. That is the first reform we need. The rhetorical sermonising from the pulpit, that when I sit on the speaker’s chair I leave behind all of my affiliations and I am not political, that is just not true. The speaker cannot at all sever his umbilical cord. He is a partisan person of a political party. Speakers of the assembly and the Parliament must be elected unopposed and given full authority to be independent.

The fulcrum of the Tenth Schedule is the speaker—the persona designata. The only one who can decide on complaints under the Tenth Schedule. The chosen arbiter. The persona designata has to be brutally and genuinely independent.