DH Radio | The Lead: What is the anti-defection law? Explained

In this episode of The Lead from DH Radio, Chakshu Roy, who heads the legislative and civic engagement initiatives at PRS Legislative Research, informs us about the anti-defection law. Amid political happenings in various regions of India in recent months, it is important that we take a refresher course and learn more about the anti-defection law.

Ahmed Shariff: Welcome to DH Radio, Chakshu.

Chakshu Roy: Hi, Ahmed. Thank you for having me on this show.

Ahmed: Let's begin it right away. My first question is qhat is this Anti-Defection Law? Can you chart us its history and the motivation behind it?

Chakshu: Ahmed, the Anti-Defection Law is a Schedule in the Constitution. It's the Schedule X of the Constitution. It was added in the constitution in 1985. The way it happened was that there were a series of defections in the late 60s and 70s that lead to the destabilisation of multiple governments — some at the state and at the Centre.

In 1985, the government of prime minister Rajiv Gandhi came in and one of the first things that happened was that the president Giani Zail Singh at the first Session of the 8th Lok Sabha, which was Mr Rajiv Gandhi's government's first Session; the president announced that the government will be piloting an anti-defection bill.

And the idea of this bill was to curb the menace of defections. Defections were defined as one legislator who fought an election on a particular political party's ticket, moving away from that particular political party and joining another political party.

So the idea was that if a legislator fought the election on one party's ticket that legislator has to stick with that party because he subscribes to the mandate of that party or to the thinking of that party. In 1985, when this law was made, it did two or three broad things.

The first thing it did was, it defined what defection was; for the first time, it actually taled about political parties — till 1985, the word 'political party' was not in the constitution— then it set down a few criteria which would constitute defection and then also it set down a few criteria as to what would be the exception to defection...

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