Defections, pre and post-poll are here to stay

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Thiruvananthapuram: When Sudini Jaipal Reddy returned to the Indian National Congress in 1999, he termed it as a “decision, not a defection”. Reddy, who had an impeccable track record in public life, had been the most vocal spokesperson of the democratic-secular non-Congress alternative for long, before he headed back to the party he cut his teeth as a young man.

Reddy must be turning in his grave as over the last one decade defections, completely devoid of any conviction, have become normal in Indian politics.

Not many an eyebrow was raised when three ministers and half-a-dozen MLAs in Uttar Pradesh resigned after the assembly elections were announced. Earlier, the poll-bound Goa had a slew of party hopping.

These were just ‘breaking news’ events for media, capable of grabbing eyeballs of the otherwise bored viewers at least for a while. The morally hyperactive commentators, who rave and rant at the drop of a hat, dismissed these floor-crossings as mere humdrum poll-eve sidelights that do not deserve to be illuminated by their insight.

There was a time when defections used to be seen as a highly localised malady that concerned just some small, politically less-conscious, states. The frequent side-switching by legislators in Haryana, for example, spawned the infamous expression “aya ram Gaya ram”.

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Of late, defections have assumed the dimensions of a systemic affliction corroding the very vitals of the body politic. In a highly polarized political and social milieu, the threat posed by this fast-spreading virus to the constitutionally- installed multi-party system is given short shrift by even the opinion-makers, who claim to look at the polity in a non-partisan manner.

Defections are rampant among the regional parties. Politicians belonging to state-level outfits are endowed with an uncanny instinct to sense which way the wind is blowing with the onset of the electoral season.

All the same, no major national party can claim to have a principled policy about defections. The Congress, in its heydays, ruthlessly instigated defections, individually and in groups, to topple duly elected governments by dangling all sorts of allurements. There were instances of the governors being used to upset ministers and foist pliable leaders at the top. Later, the BJP leadership perfected the art of defections.

The BJP showed how to brazenly ride roughshod over the popular mandate using defections after the 2017 assembly elections in Goa. The Congress played the same game against BJP after the 2018 polls in Karnataka. The grand old party was outsmarted again by the BJP in hardly over a year by cutting through the Congress ranks in the house. The game was played out in Madhya Pradesh as well.

The inevitability of coalition rule has turned many states into fertile grounds for fortune hunters to flourish. Regional participants in coalitions of various states have often shown utter disregard to ideologies or democratic principles. There is no guarantee that all the coalescing partners of a pre-poll alliance would stay together after elections.

Amid all these games played by legislators that reduce the electorate to mere onlookers, the anti-defection law has proved ineffective. The provisions of the 1985 constitutional amendment, which sought to put an end to defections by MLAs and MPs, have often been flouted by subtle legal and electoral recourse. Though there have been calls from concerned quarters for a legislative initiative to tighten the anti-defection law, no party has responded to such voices.

The legal side of the problem apart, the root cause of the poor state of electoral politics is the complete absence of internal democracy in the party system. While the Congress is entirely led by the first family, the BJP is firmly in the grip of its top brass. The democratic centralism touted by the CPI-M and CPI is a euphemism for the perpetuation of their hierarchical structure.