National

“Spare presiding officers, let tribunal rule on defection”

CHANDIGARH: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee on Tuesday said the jurisdiction and authority to deal with “defection” as provided in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution “need not continue to be exercised by the presiding officers.”

The “power should be conferred on some other authority like a special tribunal comprised of people well versed in law or on an authority like the Election Commission.”

Mr. Chatterjee was speaking at a symposium on the “Anti-Defection Law — Need for Review,” organised as part of the 73rd conference of presiding officers of legislative bodies here.

The judiciary had taken up cases challenging the decisions of the presiding officers under the Tenth Schedule and this jurisdiction was upheld by the Supreme Court. However, “to my mind, the exercise of power and jurisdiction by the presiding officer of any House should not be subjected to such scrutiny, which considerably affects the status and the position of the presiding officers…. With all respect to the judiciary, whose jurisdiction cannot be denied, it will be fit and proper and indeed desirable that the presiding officers do not continue to be under such judicial scrutiny which in many cases has given rise to avoidable tension between the two constitutional authorities.”

Mr. Chatterjee urged the presiding officers to consider the matter seriously so that suitable recommendations might be made by the conference to change the provisions of the Constitution whereby the presiding officers would be relieved of “an unwelcome jurisdiction.”

Mr. Chatterjee said the operation of the anti-defection law, 1985, over the years, indicated many grey areas in the Act. Breaking away with the support of one-third of the members of the parent party appeared easy and defections could not be checked, especially in smaller parties.

The Constitution was amended in 2003 through the Constitution (91st) Amendment Act to rectify what seemed lacunae.

However, the amendments omitted the provision relating to splits from the Tenth Schedule, and also provided that a member, disqualified under it, be disqualified for being appointed minister or for holding a remunerative political post during the period commencing from the date of his disqualification till the expiry of the term of his office or until he was elected again. Thus, the new law provided that a “split” would no longer be a defence.

However, Mr. Chatterjee said, the situation still remained largely destructive as defections motivated by power and opportunism continued to be one of the debilitating features of the Indian political system. He called for a concerted effort to see that political defections were totally banned or at least were not rewarded.

Lok Sabha Deputy Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal said political defections “betrayed the mandate of the electorate and posed a grave challenge to parliamentary polity.”

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