If recent developments in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are a pointer, then it can be suggested that the party system, without which the Westminster-style democracy that we adopted 70 years ago simply cannot be viable, is being badly corroded. It may vanish altogether if necessary steps are not urgently taken.
Apprehensions arise because inducing political defections has taken on a new meaning these days. The new technique involves no breaking of laws. Consider the Gujarat case. Six Congress MLAs out of 57 have “suddenly” resigned from their Assembly seats. For doing so, they naturally attract no penal provisions. The effort is on — by what quarters is a mystery, but the Congress has alleged that those who resigned have been paid Rs 15 crore by the BJP — to get seven more to quit.
The political aim is to get enough Congress MLAs to resign so that Ahmad Patel, Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary, doesn’t have sufficient votes to win the Rajya Sabha election from Gujarat due on August 8. It is unlikely that so many legislators from a single party have suddenly been submerged under an outpouring of love for the BJP. Therefore, an attractive quid pro quo can be safely assumed if the BJP is indeed the intended beneficiary.
If the Gujarat case has an immediate objective, Mr Patel’s defeat, the situation is quite different in Uttar Pradesh. MLAs from the Samajwadi Party and the BSP are putting in their papers and timing the effort with the arrival of BJP president Amit Shah in Lucknow. This may be called the slow ebbing of life since BSP does not have so many MLAs. Clearly, the objective here belongs to the medium or long-term. In Meghalaya, something similar is being attempted. A bunch of MLAs from various parties have suddenly expressed a desire to meet Mr Shah.
The allegation is that MLAs of different parties are being “won” over and being made to resign their legislature seat because they are either being lured with cash and better political opportunities and/or being threatened (exposure of some past wrong-doing, or physical harm).
The whole exercise is corrupt through and through. It distorts the will of the people as exercised through their ballot, and criminalises our democracy. The Election Commission should step in right away. It should make arrangements to have the MLAs who have suddenly seen the light thoroughly investigated. This won’t be easy as the BJP-run state government will resist. But an independent probe panel can be instituted. The party system is the life-blood of democracy. If it is sought to be distorted in this manner, then we are about to lose the game.
Under the anti-defection law, at least two-thirds of a party’s legislators must desert it together in order to avoid the penalty of losing their membership of the Assembly or Parliament.
