You can grasp the extent of the damage being done to Jharkhand's polity when you comprehend the sheer absurdity of a particular political plot this writer is going to narrate. Bhanu Pratap Shahi surprised most, including himself, when he won the Bhawanathpur assembly seat in 2005. He was a nominee of Forward Bloc, a party that was never a part of Jharkhand's political geography. The Forward Bloc itself was amazed to have won two seats. With the verdict quite fractured and, the composition of the legislature providing a dream playing-turf for smaller parties and Independents, Bhanu Pratap Shahi immediately understood his worth. He started his antics and was expelled from Forward Bloc, when much to the embarrassment of his party, he showed his inclination to join the Arjun Munda-led NDA government.
When four Independent MLAs, including Koda, switched sides and the fragile NDA government collapsed in a heap, Bhanu Pratap Shahi further increased his market value. Even Governor Syed Sibtey Razi, who had acquired a degree of notoriety for showing extraordinary partiality towards the UPA, recoiled at the thought of having to swear in Shahi as one of Koda's Cabinet ministers. Shahi had more than six cases pending against him including a murder charge. But with the Koda government commanding only a wafer-thin majority and Shahi among the few who held the key to the survival of this equally brittle government, the murder accused insisted that he be made the twelfth and the final minister in the 82-member assembly. After the 91st amendment to the Indian Constitution, Jharkhand can have a maximum of 12 members in the ministerial council.
As luck would have it, it was around this crucial juncture in Shahi's political career that the law caught up with him. He had to be put behind bars. Believe it or not, his aging father, Hemender Pratap Shahi, who was nowhere in the picture and whose simple, pedestrian life was far removed from the glitzy corridors of power in Ranchi, was suddenly catapulted into the centrestage. With his son counting time in jail, a shy and unprepared Hemender Pratap Shahi was sworn in as the state's health minister and held fort till Bhanu Pratap was bailed out. A defiant Madhu Koda said that it was the chief minister's prerogative to choose his ministers and anybody could occupy that post for a maximum period of six months without being elected. The senior Shahi quietly escaped from his position of pelf and power as soon as his son was released on bail.
And in the week when this compromised, handicapped government in Ranchi was going to complete five tumultuous months, the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the BSP MLAs who had shamelessly defected to strengthen the Mulayam Singh government in Lucknow more than three years ago. That defection had received the sanction of the then Speaker, Kesri Nath Tripathi even if it was staggered and even if there was actually more than one incident of defection. The numbers soared and surpassed the permissible one-third mark long after the process of floor crossing began. We must remember here that in 2003, the 91st Amendment had not taken effect and defection was still adjudicated under the previous anti-defection law (52nd Constitutional Amendment), conceived and formulated during the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's tenure in 1985. The 91st amendment is justifiably brutal towards the very idea of defection and split. If you want to split your parent party, you have to resign and contest again. A merger may be allowed only when two thirds of the total number of legislators of a particular party expresses its collective desire to cross over. The 91st amendment not only restricts the gifting of ministerial berths, but it also makes a bold attempt to terminate the cynical politics of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams.
The Supreme Court has held the defection of the first thirteen BSP MLAs illegal. The final decision on the fate of the others who had crossed over from their parent BSP has been left in the hands of the Speaker of the assembly. It means the court has made its disapproval of floor crossing absolutely clear. It also implies that the court has sought to maintain a distance from what it perceives to be legislative business and has left it to the Speaker to take necessary corrective action in the case of the other MLAs. It is another matter that Mulayam Singh Yadav will not learn the necessary lesson from this judgment. Only a fortnight before this verdict, he had engineered the defection of fourteen MLAs including, at least eight, from a structured, disciplined party like the BJP during the floor-test that he took. In the coming elections, Uttar Pradesh is going to witness quadrangular contests. There is no guarantee even after the 91st Amendment that there will not be any horse-trading.
The 91st amendment is not a foolproof legal mechanism. It doesn't recognize splits but merger remains a way out for unscrupulous politicians in smaller assemblies. Jharkhand and Goa have been particularly vulnerable to the machinations of the power-hungry political sharks. Veerappa Moily's Administrative Reforms Commission has recently come up with the suggestion that even pre-poll alliances be treated with a degree of respect and rigidity and a party should not be allowed to walk out on its partner thereby threatening the coalition. But this is a meaningless and, arguably, even an undemocratic recommendation. What is needed at the moment is a legislation whereby Independents do not switch sides lured by money and power; and smaller parties don't get fragmented paving the way for unseemly mergers.
Till then, no amount of chastisement by the Supreme Court judges is going to change the course of Indian politics. And politicians like Madhu Koda will enjoy the licence to empty our treasuries and make the most of glaring systemic flaws. About the AuthorDiptosh Majumdar Diptosh Majumdar is the former National Affairs Editor, CNN-IBN....Read Morefirst published:February 16, 2007, 20:46 ISTlast updated:February 16, 2007, 20:46 IST
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One of the country's oldest, most wretched and most primitive lunatic asylums is located in Ranchi. As though that identity tag wasn't enough, now Jharkhand's politicians are infusing lunacy into Ranchi's politics. It is in this eastern province that democratic fixers and political wheeler-dealers are making hay with or without the sun shining on them. And they are deliberately doing so because the present electoral arithmetic gives an Independent MLA the advantage of being on the top of a pile of mercenary politicians. Chief Minister Madhu Koda, country's first Independent Chief Minister, is ruling the state with a strategically thought-out policy of appeasement since September last year. No, he is not a please-all populist. He is gratefully doling out favours to fellow-politicians who are helping him stay in power. Not that this strange and rather convenient policy of satisfying political co-passengers can last for long. Madhu Koda will soon run out of sops and carrots. Only then can the Jharkhand electorate, witnessing a farce in the name of governance, heave a sigh of relief and vote to bring in a new, stable administration.
You can grasp the extent of the damage being done to Jharkhand's polity when you comprehend the sheer absurdity of a particular political plot this writer is going to narrate. Bhanu Pratap Shahi surprised most, including himself, when he won the Bhawanathpur assembly seat in 2005. He was a nominee of Forward Bloc, a party that was never a part of Jharkhand's political geography. The Forward Bloc itself was amazed to have won two seats. With the verdict quite fractured and, the composition of the legislature providing a dream playing-turf for smaller parties and Independents, Bhanu Pratap Shahi immediately understood his worth. He started his antics and was expelled from Forward Bloc, when much to the embarrassment of his party, he showed his inclination to join the Arjun Munda-led NDA government.
When four Independent MLAs, including Koda, switched sides and the fragile NDA government collapsed in a heap, Bhanu Pratap Shahi further increased his market value. Even Governor Syed Sibtey Razi, who had acquired a degree of notoriety for showing extraordinary partiality towards the UPA, recoiled at the thought of having to swear in Shahi as one of Koda's Cabinet ministers. Shahi had more than six cases pending against him including a murder charge. But with the Koda government commanding only a wafer-thin majority and Shahi among the few who held the key to the survival of this equally brittle government, the murder accused insisted that he be made the twelfth and the final minister in the 82-member assembly. After the 91st amendment to the Indian Constitution, Jharkhand can have a maximum of 12 members in the ministerial council.
As luck would have it, it was around this crucial juncture in Shahi's political career that the law caught up with him. He had to be put behind bars. Believe it or not, his aging father, Hemender Pratap Shahi, who was nowhere in the picture and whose simple, pedestrian life was far removed from the glitzy corridors of power in Ranchi, was suddenly catapulted into the centrestage. With his son counting time in jail, a shy and unprepared Hemender Pratap Shahi was sworn in as the state's health minister and held fort till Bhanu Pratap was bailed out. A defiant Madhu Koda said that it was the chief minister's prerogative to choose his ministers and anybody could occupy that post for a maximum period of six months without being elected. The senior Shahi quietly escaped from his position of pelf and power as soon as his son was released on bail.
And in the week when this compromised, handicapped government in Ranchi was going to complete five tumultuous months, the Supreme Court gave its verdict on the BSP MLAs who had shamelessly defected to strengthen the Mulayam Singh government in Lucknow more than three years ago. That defection had received the sanction of the then Speaker, Kesri Nath Tripathi even if it was staggered and even if there was actually more than one incident of defection. The numbers soared and surpassed the permissible one-third mark long after the process of floor crossing began. We must remember here that in 2003, the 91st Amendment had not taken effect and defection was still adjudicated under the previous anti-defection law (52nd Constitutional Amendment), conceived and formulated during the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's tenure in 1985. The 91st amendment is justifiably brutal towards the very idea of defection and split. If you want to split your parent party, you have to resign and contest again. A merger may be allowed only when two thirds of the total number of legislators of a particular party expresses its collective desire to cross over. The 91st amendment not only restricts the gifting of ministerial berths, but it also makes a bold attempt to terminate the cynical politics of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams.
The Supreme Court has held the defection of the first thirteen BSP MLAs illegal. The final decision on the fate of the others who had crossed over from their parent BSP has been left in the hands of the Speaker of the assembly. It means the court has made its disapproval of floor crossing absolutely clear. It also implies that the court has sought to maintain a distance from what it perceives to be legislative business and has left it to the Speaker to take necessary corrective action in the case of the other MLAs. It is another matter that Mulayam Singh Yadav will not learn the necessary lesson from this judgment. Only a fortnight before this verdict, he had engineered the defection of fourteen MLAs including, at least eight, from a structured, disciplined party like the BJP during the floor-test that he took. In the coming elections, Uttar Pradesh is going to witness quadrangular contests. There is no guarantee even after the 91st Amendment that there will not be any horse-trading.
The 91st amendment is not a foolproof legal mechanism. It doesn't recognize splits but merger remains a way out for unscrupulous politicians in smaller assemblies. Jharkhand and Goa have been particularly vulnerable to the machinations of the power-hungry political sharks. Veerappa Moily's Administrative Reforms Commission has recently come up with the suggestion that even pre-poll alliances be treated with a degree of respect and rigidity and a party should not be allowed to walk out on its partner thereby threatening the coalition. But this is a meaningless and, arguably, even an undemocratic recommendation. What is needed at the moment is a legislation whereby Independents do not switch sides lured by money and power; and smaller parties don't get fragmented paving the way for unseemly mergers.
Till then, no amount of chastisement by the Supreme Court judges is going to change the course of Indian politics. And politicians like Madhu Koda will enjoy the licence to empty our treasuries and make the most of glaring systemic flaws.
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