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Safe despite legal setback

In battleground Uttar Pradesh, every day brings a new twist. A fortnight ago Mulayam Singh won a heated vote of confidence on the floor of the Assembly. He pulled this off in the face of a growing clamour for his dismissal and the withdrawal of support for his government by the Congress and the Rashtriya Lok Dal. With his majority, 223 in a house of 404, indisputably established, the Chief Minister was presumed to be safe — at least until the upcoming Assembly election. That status has not changed although his numbers no longer look so good following the Supreme Court's disqualification of 13 former Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs for their August 2003 role in propping up the Samajwadi Party-led government. Added to this is the uncertainty relating to a second batch of 24 BSP MLAs who switched sides — but, crucially, a whole 10 days after the 13 MLAs.

A shortfall of 13 does no material damage to Mr. Singh's regime. Simple arithmetic shows that even if all 37 are out, he will have a slim majority — 186 MLAs in a diminished house of 367. Unsurprisingly, the judicial verdict has brought back the demand for the dismissal of Chief Minister Singh's government. If the United Progressive Alliance government had any thoughts of embarking on such a course — despite the Bommai judgment of the apex court — that would be unadulterated folly. However, the disqualifying judgment of the Supreme Court focuses fresh attention on the unsavoury practice of incentivised defection, which despite amendments to the Tenth Schedule, has become the hallmark of Indian legislative politics. The focus is now on a political system that allows house Speaker after house Speaker, in U.P. and elsewhere, to play partisan games. Called upon to disqualify the first batch of 13 BSP MLAs, who self-evidently did not constitute a third of their party's strength as required by the Tenth Schedule, Speaker Kesri Nath Tripathi promptly took up a second petition — filed together by the group of 37. The defectors sought recognition in one go for several claims: a split in the original BSP; the fulfilment of the one-third legal requirement through their collective strength; their formation of a separate party (the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal); and the new entity's merger with the Samajwadi Party. Mr. Tripathi legitimised a split that, according to the apex court, was never established. In 1997, the same Speaker legitimised a dubious split when he allowed Kalyan Singh to take on board 12 of the BSP's 66 MLAs. Unluckily for the Indian democratic polity, a review petition challenging the Speaker's order had to be disposed of by the apex court on the ground that the expiry of the term of the Assembly had rendered the challenge infructuous.

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