Critically Evaluating Anti-Defection Jurisprudence From Kihoto Hollohan To Manoj Narula: Party Stability Versus Representative Accountability In Indian Constitutional Law
- IJLLR Journal
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
Swarna Yati, Gujarat National Law University, Gandhinagar
1. INTRODUCTION
Few legislative interventions have shaped India's parliamentary landscape as decisively as the anti-defection law. By attaching the sanction of disqualification to any vote cast against the party whip, the Tenth Schedule placed collective discipline squarely above individual legislative judgment. That choice demands scrutiny, not because it was wrong to curtail opportunistic floor-crossing, but because the manner in which the law has been designed and applied raises questions that go to the heart of constitutional governance. Three such questions organise this paper: what constitutional values does the law serve, and which does it compromise? How has the Supreme Court refined its operation through successive judgments? And does the current doctrine actually achieve a defensible equilibrium between party stability and representative accountability?
These questions have grown sharper since the 91st Amendment Act (2003), as political actors have discovered increasingly creative routes around the law, engineering mass defections to clear the merger threshold, resigning in coordinated waves to sidestep disqualification altogether, and exploiting the Speaker's structural inability to adjudicate impartially. The Maharashtra crisis of 2022, which simultaneously engaged the Governor, the Speaker, the Election Commission, and a Constitution Bench, made it impossible to pretend that these are marginal or incidental problems. They are built into the architecture.
This paper pursues four aims. First, it traces the doctrinal development from Kihoto Hollohan v Zachillhu through Manoj Narula v Union of India and the most recent cases. Second, it examines the Speaker's adjudicatory role and the limited reach of judicial review. Third, it weighs the balance the law has struck, or failed to strike, between governmental stability and legislative independence. Fourth, it tests these doctrinal findings against ten state assembly disqualification decisions from the past decade.
