Resorting to tactics

Lok Sabha members often privilege their membership of Parliament over that of their Rajya Sabha colleagues. Theirs is,goes the argument,the more meaningful selection,with election directly by constituents serving as a deeply democratic astringent. They would,however,concede that election to the Rajya Sabha can often test a candidates ingenuity and capacity for political mobilisation of an entirely different order.

Before the Representation of the People Act was amended in 2003 to introduce open ballot for election to the Rajya Sabha,and to do away with the requirement that a candidate be domiciled in the the state she was seeking to represent,cross-voting was almost the norm. The amendment was subsequently,and unsuccessfully,challenged in court. The election could be a test of persuasiveness,and many politicians would announce their networking skills by netting votes disproportional to their partys presence in the assembly. Now decision-making stops with the party leadership. An MLA could technically have her vote count even if she defies the partys diktat and votes for another aspirant,but that could also cost her membership of the assembly.

It is therefore odd to see the lengths some political parties are going to in order to keep their MLAs from infidelity. The BJP checked its contingent in the Rajasthan assembly into a resort on the outskirts of Jaipur. Rather disingenuously,the party said this is part of training them for the task of casting their vote. The BJPs crisis in Rajasthan has been obvious: the election is so tight that if the BJP wants both candidates to win,every vote matters. But the way the BJP resorted to the unseemliest of ways to try to pull off the election of its candidates shows how insecure it was about its MLAs.