Leaving the party

Published October 1, 2016
The writer is an author and lawyer based in Mumbai.
The writer is an author and lawyer based in Mumbai.

IN the general elections in 1929, Sir William Jowitt, a rising barrister, was elected to parliament as a member of the Liberal Party on May 30. Five days later, on June 4, he became attorney general in the Labour government. He resigned his seat and was re-elected on July 31. The question continued to haunt— why the sudden conversion once public office was offered to him?

As lord chancellor, he announced in February 1950 the dissolution of the House of Commons and entered the dining hall to join a group of young Liberal peers, telling them that their future was brighter than his. If Labour lost, he would lose his job. An obscure peer, Lord Mancroft, remarked to his neighbour in an audible aside: “I wonder if there is any room in the vicarage at Bray.” Jowitt was not forgiven even 21 years later.

It is the political culture in which ‘turncoats’ were not forgiven which sustained the conventions of Britain’s unwritten constitution.


All efforts at reform of the law have failed to curb the vice of defection.


Our lot has been a sorry one, as the archives reveal. The governor of Bengal informed the viceroy about cases of corruption among members of the Legislative Council.

On Aug 16, 1924, he asked the home secretary as to how the menace could be tackled. There were offers to pay sums to members of the council to abstain from voting in the division on ministers’ salaries; actual payments made to members of the council; salaried posts in the corporation; and monthly payments to members of the Legislative Council to absent themselves during sessions when important debates were to take place.

The answer he got was that while it was an offence to bribe a voter, the tender of a bribe to, or the receipt of a bribe by a member of a legislature, was not an offence.

All efforts at reform of the law have failed to curb the vice of defection. On Sept 16 this year, all but one of the 44 members of the Congress party led by the Chief Minister Pema Khandu crossed over to a regional party, part of a BJP-led alliance.

From 1947, the Congress held sway under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. In the general election of 1967, the first one after his death in 1964, it suffered defeat in very many states. That is when MLAs discovered their price.

The sordid depths to which they sank was well described by the governor of Haryana B.N. Chakraborty in a report to the president on Nov 17, 1967:

“Defections have become very frequent. The opposition could never reconcile itself to its position as a responsible opposition. … The government has also sought to maintain itself precariously in power by creating too many ministers which is an abuse of its constitutional powers. … Administration is paralysed. With such a thin majority, individual MLAs are able to make extravagant demands. Every one seems to want to be a minister or a parliamentary secretary.

“Now that so many members of the legislature have tasted power and have seen that by threatening to defect they can get what they want, it seems to me that no alternative stable ministry can be formed so long as there are such large numbers of members whose loyalties are so flexible.”

Evidently nothing had changed since 1924. Worse, nothing has changed since 1967 either. Only techniques have changed; the game remains the same. Chairmanship or membership of boards of public-sector corporations have become consolation prizes to those refused ministerial berths. Fat salaries and attractive perks are offered.

The report of an all-party committee on defection, presented to parliament on Feb 18, 1969, was ignored once the Congress split that year. It recommended a ban on appointment of a legislator as minister for a prescribed period if he had defected from his party.

Reform came only in 1985 to freeze the massive majority Rajiv Gandhi had won. The constitution was amended to define a defector as one who had “voluntarily given up his membership” of the party, or flouted its whip even on an issue which did not affect the government’s survival.

Two exceptions were made; one was a split by one-third of the party. This was deleted in 2003 since it was used to facilitate wholesale defections. The other is merger of parties.

But its greatest defect is that it makes a political appointee the speaker or judge in disputed cases. The obvious course of making the election commission judge in such cases was studiously avoided.

Pakistan has a law to bring lotas to heel, so has Sri Lanka.

We must ask ourselves why in the entire democratic world does South Asia need laws to curb defections. The lota’s message is simple. He reflects a malaise in the polity which existed before Independence.

The writer is an author and lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn, October 1st, 2016

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