The government’s reported plans for calling a special session of Parliament to move the women’s reservation bill alongside introducing a fresh delimitation plan of Lok Sabha constituencies point to a weird confidence on mustering the numbers in both the Houses to get them through. The whole move is based not on bona fide acts that will help the government achieve its targets but on acts that undermine the letter and the spirit of the law and basic democratic principles.
The Constitution amendment bill on women’s reservation fell through in the Lok Sabha in April this year when it got only 293 votes against the required 361; the combined Opposition’s strength was recorded at 230. No party has since shifted its allegiance to the NDA side so as to give the government the confidence to return to the House with the same bill; it is banking on the defections it has engineered in some of the parties in the Opposition bloc. The Trinamul Congress’ 20 members in the Lok Sabha now sit on the Treasury side while the party on whose tickets they won the membership of the House continues to oppose the move. Six of the nine MPs of the Shiv Sena (UBT) have also left the party to join the NDA bandwagon. The only party which has moved from opposing the bill to an equivocal position is the DMK which has 20 members in the House.
The anti-defection law as it exists today allows for no split in the parliamentary party for the defecting members to escape disqualification. But the presiding officers of the Houses either refuse to act as per the law on defections or delay it forever so that the defectors continue to hold office. The judiciary does not view defections as acts that call for its urgent intervention. Such inaction apart, it will be a fraud on the Constitution and the law if the government banks on these illegal defectors and get a Constitution amendment bill passed. The government must desist from doing so.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
