Can court uphold sanctity of anti-defection law in Bengal?

All eyes are now on the court over enforcing anti-defection law, which has turned into a farce in West Bengal under the Trinamool Congress regime.

The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday set an October 7 deadline for Assembly speaker Biman Banerjee to act on a petition seeking disqualification of Mukul Roy, who had defected to the TMC in June this year after being elected to the House in a BJP ticket.

Roy was the first among the four BJP legislators to switch sides after the TMC returned to power with a two-thirds majority in May this year. None of them however resigned from the assembly. To make matters worse, Roy was even made Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman, a post that should go to an opposition MLA by convention.

The latest defection saga followed a similar political strategy of swelling its legislative strength by poaching from rival camps, dodging the law, adopted by the TMC in its previous two terms allegedly with impunity from the Speaker.

More than 15 legislators from the Congress and the Left parties had joined the TMC in its previous two terms, but no defection charges were brought against them despite several petitions to the speaker by the parties that had been poached upon.

The 10th Schedule of the Constitution, which is popularly referred to as the ‘Anti-Defection Law’, mandates that a member of a House belonging to any political party shall be disqualified if he or she has (a) voluntarily relinquished membership of such a political party, or (b) voted or abstained from voting in such House contrary to any direction issued by the political party to which he belongs.

Also read: Mukul Roy is back in Trinamool; party says more leaders on their way

As per the law, enacted by Parliament in 1985, the onus to decide on defections lies with the Speaker. But in Bengal, the law has not been enforced strictly despite an increasing tendency in the last one decade or so among lawmakers to jump ships.

Biman Banerjee, who was also the Speaker in the last two terms, held several hearings on disqualification petitions against erring legislators during his over-10-year tenure on the chair, but none led to the disqualification of any MLA.

The last time the law was enforced in the state assembly was in 2008 during the Left Front regime. The then speaker, late Hashim Abdul Halim, disqualified Congress legislators Somen Mitra and Sudip Bandyopadhyay for defecting to the TMC, violating the anti-defection law.

Never in the past, however, was the door of the court knocked to enforce the law. The BJP this time appeared determined to press for the disqualification of MLAs. It took the matter to court as its petitions seeking disqualification of Roy and other party defectors are pending with the Speaker.

BJP MLA Ambika Roy has filed a PIL against Mukul Roy’s appointment as PAC chairman. Leader of Opposition and BJP’s Nandigram MLA Suvendu Adhikari too filed a petition in the high court on Monday (September 27), seeking disqualification of Roy as an MLA under the anti-defection law.

“The Supreme Court in a case pertaining to a Manipur MLA (Keisham Meghachandra Singh) fixed a timeframe of three months for a Speaker to take a decision on a disqualification petition. I had filed a petition to the Speaker seeking Mukul Roy’s disqualification on June 18. Since the three months period has lapsed and yet the Speaker has not taken any decision, I was compelled to move the court,” Adhikari said, saying his party would leave no stone unturned to ensure disqualification of defectors.

Also read: A tale of two turncoats: Mukul Roy and Himanta Biswa Sarma

The BJP’s effort got a boost when the high court’s division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj said that the court would decide the next course of action if the Speaker failed to submit an action taken report on the petition seeking Roy’s disqualification by October 7.

“A petition filed for his (Roy’s) disqualification is pending before the Speaker for the last more than three months, the maximum period fixed in the Keishal Meghachandra Singh’s case for a decision,” the court observed, pointing out that the three-month deadline had already lapsed.

More importantly, the division bench also rejected the argument that the court did not have jurisdiction over actions of the Speaker, stating that it would have been debarred from entertaining the petition if it was a case of “procedural irregularities”.

“The court’s observation certainly came as a positive development towards curbing the blatant flouting of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, but the last word on the contentious issue has certainly not been heard yet,” said Naba Pallab Roy, an advocate and political commentator.

More so, when the TMC itself is pursuing cases pending with Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla against two of its defectors Sisir Adhikari and Sunil Mandal. Both defected to the BJP ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections without resigning from the Lok Sabha.

Mandal now has expressed his desire to be back in the TMC fold, further exposing what the division bench called “evil of political defections motivated by lure of office, which endangers the foundation of our democracy”.