Only a rookie observer of Indian politics will believe that 20 rebel Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha members spontaneously decided to join a little-known Tripura-based party that has never had a lawmaker anywhere in the country and has netted only slightly more votes than NOTA in the handful of elections it has fought. In joining the Nationalist Citizens Party of India, the rebel TMC parliamentarians may be able to save their seats in the Lok Sabha but their actions have served the latest indictment of India’s anti-defection laws. Political parties have found a way around the penalties of the anti-defection laws and control over the Speaker’s position has come to acquire far more importance than the spirit of the law.
It is, of course, ironic that former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is the latest victim of this brand of transactional politics because she pioneered this brand of soft defections in Bengal when she picked up a number of Bharatiya Janata Party legislators without any of them losing their seats. With defections becoming more commonand brazen, there is an urgent need to overhaul anti-defection provisions and initiate an all-party conversation on the contours of a new pact. Unfortunately, a consensus might elude such an effort because parties, across the ideological spectrum, are loath to change provisions from which they believe they will one day benefit.
