In a desperate move, the Congress shepherded its candidates fighting the Goa assembly elections to a temple, a church and a mosque and made them take an oath of loyalty to the party. The ritual is being replicated in Manipur, another state with a small assembly. In both Goa and Manipur, the BJP, with its offers of power and pelf had bought most of the Congress MLAs five years ago, denying the grand old party an opportunity to form the government. The BJP repeated the strategy later in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka—states with bigger assemblies—replacing incumbent chief ministers with its nominees. Most of the defectors from the Congress in all four states got re-elected on the lotus symbol and became ministers.
The Congress, once again fearing the brute power of the BJP and having no faith in the anti-defection law, hopes that a promise made before divine powers will bind the winners with a sense of obligation. Similar attempts, however, have come a cropper in the past. The first big attempt to hold elected representatives accountable was made by two idealistic Gandhians—Jayaprakash Narayan, revered as Lok Nayak for his fight against authoritarianism, and Acharya J.B. Kripalani. On March 24, 1977, they administered a pledge to the newly elected MPs, including four future prime ministers and two future deputy prime ministers at Rajghat. The MPs had defeated the seemingly invincible Indira Congress and many had been imprisoned during the Emergency, which witnessed the suppression of fundamental rights. The MPs, who came from eight parties, promised to carry on Gandhiji’s work, safeguard democracy and practise honesty. But within hours began the jockeying for prime ministership and the infighting was on original party lines. The Janata experiment collapsed after two years and the government was toppled. The splits and defections began in 1979, with Indira Gandhi exploiting the ambitions and egos of the men who had defeated her.
Illustration: Bhaskaran
If Janata leaders had spoken about a law to ban defections, it was Indira’s son, Rajiv, as prime minister, who got the Constitution amended in 1985 to ban individual defections. But the new law permitted a split by at least one-third MPs of a party. The law has been used, misused, abused and ignored by governments of most parties at the Centre and the states in the last 37 years, as speakers have been partisan to the interests of their parties. The Supreme Court, with all its powers, could not prevent the deliberate procrastination of the Manipur speaker sitting over Congress petitions for the disqualification of defectors.
Political parties have tried ingenious methods to tackle dissent. When senior minister Arjun Singh threatened to walk away with dissidents who supported him, prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao did not expel Singh, which would have allowed him to keep his Lok Sabha membership. Instead, Singh’s membership in the Congress was downgraded to the lowest level. After some months, Singh went ahead with the formation of a new political party. Aggressive parties like the Shiv Sena and the Trinamool Congress have cadres who menace potential defectors. In more aggressive scenarios, malcontents have even been slapped by their supreme leader.
The Congress, however, has no ethical consistency as it has freely welcomed defectors and given them tickets in the five states, leading to heartburn among Congressmen who have nursed the constituencies. Unless the Congress gets majority on its own in Goa and Manipur, its hopes of retaining the victorious MLAs would rest on a wing and a prayer.
sachi@theweek.in