SC seeks Centre’s reply on plea over anti-defection law ‘merger’ exception
Supreme Court sought the Union government’s reply on a petition challenging how the anti-defection law’s “merger” exception is interpreted under the Tenth Schedule (Paragraph 4).
- The Tenth Schedule sets when elected members can be disqualified for switching parties.
- Paragraph 4 provides an exception when two political groups can be treated as merged under set conditions.
- The dispute concerns whether a “merger” can be treated as happening only from a two-thirds claim by the legislature party, without other signs of a real merger.
- Anti-defection rules can affect which legislators keep their seats, which in turn can affect government numbers.
What happened
The Supreme Court asked the Union government to file its response to a petition by senior advocate Kapil Sibal. The petition challenges how the anti-defection law’s “merger” exception is interpreted under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, particularly Paragraph 4.
Kapil Sibal’s argument targets a rule-like interpretation of “merger” based on internal claims within a political party. Sibal questioned treating a political party as “merged” with another solely because two-thirds of members of a legislature party claim such a merger, even without other indications that an actual merger occurred.
The case raises how far courts should go in testing the operational reading of the Tenth Schedule’s Paragraph 4 against constitutional expectations about political stability and legislative choice. For UPSC, the focus is on the anti-defection law’s design: what counts as a “merger,” who decides, and how that can change government formation and survival.
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