4 min readJul 20, 2026 05:46 PM IST
First published on: Jul 20, 2026 at 05:45 PM IST
As Parliament’s Monsoon Session commences, the red carpets of the Rajya Sabha will have some different shadows cast upon them by MPs who originally belonged to one shade of political party but now belong to another. The arithmetic of the House will also change because of these large-scale defections and realignments.
The Opposition predictably attributes these defections to horse-trading, political inducements and the fear of investigative agencies. The ruling party, on the other hand, argues that many legislators have merely chosen to free themselves from autocratic or family-centric political organisations. There may be elements of truth in both narratives. Amid this exchange of accusations and counter-accusations, a more fundamental issue gets overlooked — the continuing failure of India’s anti-defection law to contain the very political opportunism it was enacted to curb.
The anti-defection law was introduced through the Fifty-second Constitutional Amendment in 1985 by incorporating the Tenth Schedule into the Constitution. Its principal objective was to curb the political instability caused by frequent defections. The Ninety-first Amendment of 2003 further tightened the law by abolishing the exemption from disqualification for a bloc comprising at least one-third of the members of a legislature party. Thereafter, only a merger supported by at least two-thirds of the members of a legislature party remained eligible for this exemption.
The experience of implementing the anti-defection law, even after these amendments, has been far from satisfactory. Under the Tenth Schedule, the authority to decide disqualification petitions rests with the presiding officers of the respective Houses — the Speaker in the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies, and the Chairmen in the Rajya Sabha and Legislative Councils. While the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha is mandated to resign from his parent party, this is not obligatory for the Speakers. This arrangement, rightly or wrongly, inevitably gives rise to questions about institutional impartiality. Presiding officers have delayed decisions on disqualification petitions for months and years, and at times, for the entire tenure of the House. The Supreme Court has repeatedly observed that such petitions should ordinarily be decided within three months, and some Chairmen of the Rajya Sabha have echoed the same expectation. Yet deliberate procedural delays have often rendered the law ineffective.
Paradoxically, the stricter provisions have also not eliminated defections. Instead, political efforts now focus on engineering defections on a larger scale, enough to satisfy the two-thirds requirement. The phenomenon has become more organised, accompanied by greater political bargaining and inducements. Thus, the anti-defection law has become an instrument for escalating defections rather than preventing them.
What is the solution? It needs some drastic and fundamental constitutional changes. We would need a law to automatically end, on the date of resignation, the tenure of any elected representative who resigns from the political party on whose ticket he or she was elected. The individual could seek a fresh mandate, and if he or she enjoys public support independent of party affiliation, there should be no difficulty in securing re-election — either as an Independent candidate or as another party’s nominee, in the vacated seat or any other. This would shift the ultimate authority to decide a defecting legislator’s right to continue in the House from party managers and presiding officers to the electorate.
Critics may argue that such a provision would discourage genuine dissent within political parties and inhibit independent thinking. That concern, however, appears overstated. Legislators would remain entirely free to disagree with their party, resign from it and seek a fresh mandate. What the amendment would discourage is not dissent but the retention of an elected office after abandoning the political platform on which that office was secured.
The writer is former secretary general, Rajya Sabha, Parliament of India
The anti-defection law was introduced through the Fifty-second Constitutional Amendment in 1985 by incorporating the Tenth Schedule into the Constitution. 
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