On April 24, 2016, a major earthquake hit Indian politics. Seven Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha MPs abandoned ship and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. Raghav Chadha was the leader of this brigade. Questions arose about how they could change parties without giving up their valuable seats in parliament. This is all possible due to a loophole in the Constitution
How the Anti-Defection Law works
Let’s delve into the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution. This crucial part of the Constitution was added in 1985 by the 52nd Amendment. It aims to prevent party-hopping by politicians. In the past, elected officials could join a party one day and leave the next day to join another one. This led to a lot of confusion in state and central parliaments
Today the rules are very stringent. If an MP wants to resign from the party, they get disqualified. They get disqualified instantly. They also get disqualified if they don’t follow the specific orders from their party leaders in the parliament. The idea is to honour the mandate of the people. They vote for the political party, as much as they vote for the candidate.
The Two-Thirds Loophole
All good rules have exceptions. The Tenth Schedule is no different. It has an escape route known as the merger provision. The rules say that if a huge chunk of lawmakers abandons one party to join another, it’s not a defection. It is a bona-fide political merger
But what is the size of this chunk? The numbers are spelled out in the text. Precisely two-thirds of the elected members of that party in the particular house of Parliament must resign together. If they reach this magic number, the anti-defection axe does not fall. They can hold on to their positions, pay packages and privileges.
The AAP Rajya Sabha Math
Let’s look at the numbers in the upper house of parliament for AAP. The party had 10 MPs in the Rajya Sabha before April 24. To exercise the legal merger provision, they needed a two-thirds majority of this group. Two-thirds of 10 is 6.66. As we don’t deal in portions, the law rounds up to seven.
So Raghav Chadha had to find six others to join him. Five will only be 50 percent. Seven would be 70 percent. That’s just fine and safe.
The Seven Who Walked
Chadha did the maths. He called a news conference to announce the split. He produced documents with the signatures of seven MPs. Some of the names were quite big in the AAP camp. One of them was Sandeep Pathak. He was once thought to be the party’s chief strategist.
Noted businessman Rajinder Gupta and Ashok Mittal were also among the signatories. There was also cricketer Harbhajan Singh. Vikram Sahney and Swati Maliwal rounded up the seven. Maliwal was known for her stint as head of the Delhi Commission for Women.
Submitting the Paperwork
You can’t announce a merger on TV. The group had to formalise it in the parliament. Chadha and his men took a procession to the Rajya Sabha Chairman’s office. They presented a letter to merge their party with the ruling BJP.
This paperwork
