Supreme Court judgement on Anti-defection law
Articles 102 (2) and 191 (2) deals with anti-defection.The intention of the provision is to check the corruption/horse trading in parliament/ to check the popular phenomenon.
The purpose, as is obvious, is to curb political defection by the legislators. There are two grounds on which a member of a legislature can be disqualified.
One, if the member voluntarily gives up the membership of the party, he shall be disqualified. Voluntarily giving up the membership is not the same as resigning from a party. Even without resigning, a legislator can be disqualified if by his conduct the Speaker/Chairman of the concerned House draws a reasonable inference that the member has voluntarily given up the membership of his party.
Second, if a legislator votes in the House against the direction of his party and his action is not condoned by his party, he can be disqualified. These are the two grounds on which a legislator can be disqualified from being a member of the House.
However, there is an exception that was provided in the law to protect the legislators from disqualification.
The 10th Schedule says that if there is a merger between two political parties and two-thirds of the members of a legislature party agree to the merger, they will not be disqualified.
Speaker/ chairman of the house is the authority to decide on defection cases. Speaker sits as a tribunal while deciding on defection cases. All proceedings in relation to any question on disqualification of a member of a House under this Schedule are deemed to be proceedings in Parliament or in the Legislature of a state. No court has any jurisdiction. However, the decision can be brought to court after Kihoto Hollohan case of 1992.
The issue came up before a Bench headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman while deciding a petition regarding disqualification of Manipur Forest and Environment Minister T Shyamkumar
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