Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh on Sunday submitted a petition to the Rajya Sabha Chairperson seeking the disqualification of seven of the party’s 10 MPs in the Upper House who had on Friday announced their merger with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Singh claimedthe seven MPs, led by Raghav Chadha, have violated anti-defection provisions.
The AAP petition will be the most consequential test in two decades of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which lays out the disqualification of legislators and parliamentarians on the grounds of defection.
The Rajya Sabha chairperson faces interlocking issues. A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court has, in its 2023 ruling on the split in the Shiv Sena, already supplied most of the guidance – mainly, that two-thirds of the members joining another party must also be supported by what is happening in the parent party outside the House.
However, India’s constitutional law has landed in a strange place: a single member who votes against the party whip risks losing their seat, but a group from a party doing the same thing together can avoid any consequences if two-thirds of them in the legislature do so and call it a “merger”.
In effect, what is punished when done alone is permitted when done collectively.
The merger exception under Paragraph 4 of the...
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