Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
The Telangana High Court’s decision disqualifying Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender produced a rare point of agreement between political rivals. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) welcomed the verdict and demanded similar action against other legislators who had moved away from the party.
The BJP hailed it as a victory for democracy and the Constitution. The state Congress president, too, welcomed the judgment while maintaining that his party had not encouraged defections.
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The story, so far.
Nagender was elected to the Telangana Assembly in 2023 on a BRS ticket. While continuing as an MLA, he contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Secunderabad as a Congress candidate.
On September 18, 2026, the Telangana High Court set aside the Speaker’s decision rejecting the petitions against him and held that he stood disqualified from April 23, 2024. The Khairatabad seat was consequently declared vacant.
The court held that contesting as a Congress candidate while continuing as an MLA elected on a BRS ticket attracted disqualification under the Tenth Schedule. Nagender has since approached the Supreme Court challenging the High Court order.
The fact of the matter is that parties that condemn defections when they lose legislators view comparable political realignments differently when they stand to gain from them. Parties across the political spectrum—national and regional—have, at different points in time, benefited from legislators changing sides.
A PROBLEM OLDER THAN THE LAW
Political defection is hardly a recent phenomenon. The expression “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” entered Indian political vocabulary after Haryana legislator Gaya Lal repeatedly changed sides in 1967. Between 1967 and 1971, there were 142 defections in Parliament and 1,969 in State Assemblies; 32 governments collapsed during those four years, according to PRS Legislative Research.
PARLIAMENT’S RESPONSE
In 1985, through the Constitution (Fifty-second Amendment) Act, the Parliament inserted the Tenth Schedule. Accordingly, an elected legislator can incur disqualification by voluntarily giving up membership of the party on whose ticket he or she was elected, or by voting or abstaining contrary to the party direction in specified circumstances.
The power to decide disqualification was entrusted to the Speaker or Chairman of the House.
But the original law itself contained an exception for a “split” involving one-third of a legislature party.
The Constitution (Ninety-first Amendment) Act, 2003 removed that exception, while retaining protection for a merger involving at least two-thirds of the members of a legislative party.
Political practice adapted.
Instead of the lone legislator crossing the floor, later decades increasingly saw groups large enough to invoke the merger provision—or legislators resigning in numbers sufficient to change the majority in the House.
WHEN POLITICAL POSITIONS REVERSE
Telangana provides an unusually clear illustration of how political positions can change with circumstances.
In June 2019, 12 of the 18 Congress MLAs in the Telangana Assembly sought merger with the then ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, now the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.
Since they constituted two-thirds of the Congress Legislature Party, the Speaker recognised their merger with the TRS Legislature Party under Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule. Congress strongly protested the development.
Today the positions are reversed. The Congress is in government, BRS is in Opposition, and legislators elected on BRS tickets have moved towards the ruling party.
Nagender went further: while still an MLA elected on a BRS ticket, he contested a Lok Sabha election as a Congress candidate.
The lesson is not that one party is uniquely culpable. It is that the stand of political parties on defection tends to change depending upon whether they are beneficiaries or victims.
TAKING A LOOK BACK
Recent history offers several striking examples of how changes of allegiance and resignations can alter governments.
In Arunachal Pradesh in 2016, 43 of 44 Congress legislators moved to the People’s Party of Arunachal. By the end of that year, Chief Minister Pema Khandu and 32 other PPA legislators joined the BJP, giving the State a full-fledged BJP government without a fresh Assembly election.
In Karnataka in 2019, the rebellion and resignations of 17 Congress-JD(S) legislators contributed to the collapse of the H.D. Kumaraswamy government and the return of the BJP to power. The Supreme Court subsequently upheld their disqualification, while allowing them to contest the ensuing by-elections.
In Madhya Pradesh in 2020, 22 Congress MLAs resigned during the political crisis that brought down the Kamal Nath government. The former Congress legislators subsequently joined the BJP.
DIFFERENT WAYS TO COMBAT THE LEGAL HURDLE
These events did not all take the same constitutional form. Some involved mergers, some resignations, some disqualification proceedings. But their common political consequence was that the balance produced by an election was substantially altered before the next general election.
WHAT THE NUMBERS SAY
The broader trend can also be seen in data compiled by the Association for Democratic Reforms.
ADR examined 500 MPs and MLAs who switched parties and re-contested elections between 2014 and 2021. Of them, 173, or 35 per cent, joined the BJP. Sixty-one joined the Congress and 31 joined the Trinamool Congress. During the same period, 177 MPs and MLAs left the Congress, compared with 33 who left the BJP.
THE PROBLEM HAS REACHED BOTH HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
In the Lok Sabha, the Trinamool Congress has sought the disqualification of 20 MPs who broke away from the party and announced a merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India.
The Speaker issued notices on the disqualification petitions, and the dispute has also reached the Supreme Court, where the emphasis has been on ensuring that the proceedings are concluded within a reasonable time.
The Rajya Sabha has faced a comparable controversy. In April 2026, seven of AAP’s ten members in the Upper House quit the party and announced their merger with the BJP. AAP petitioned the Rajya Sabha Chairman seeking their disqualification and disputing the validity of the claimed merger.
AN IMPORTANT CONCERN VOICED BY THE SUPREME COURT
The legal questions in these cases are not identical, and their merits must be decided under the Constitution. But their pendency highlights a structural question that has repeatedly troubled the Supreme Court: should a presiding officer drawn from active party politics be the sole adjudicator of disputes that can alter the political strength of the House?
EXPECTATION OF CONSTITUTIONAL IMPARTIALITY AND EXPERIENCE
The Tenth Schedule gives the Speaker or Chairman the power to decide whether a member has incurred disqualification.
The arrangement rests on an expectation of constitutional impartiality. Experience, however, has repeatedly produced litigation over delay and the handling of such petitions.
In Keisham Meghachandra Singh v. Speaker, Manipur Legislative Assembly in 2020, the Supreme Court stressed that disqualification petitions should ordinarily be decided within a reasonable period and called for reconsideration of whether the Speaker should continue to exercise this adjudicatory power.
IT IS A HYDRA HEAD
The issue arose again, strikingly, in Telangana. On July 31, 2025, while dealing with petitions involving BRS legislators, the Supreme Court criticised the prolonged delay by the Telangana Speaker and directed that the pending disqualification petitions be decided within three months.
More importantly, it urged Parliament to reconsider whether entrusting disqualification decisions to the Speaker continued to serve the purpose of curbing political defections.
The present Nagender case gives that observation added relevance. The Speaker had rejected the petitions seeking his disqualification; the Telangana High Court has now set that decision aside and declared him disqualified. The matter is now headed to the Supreme Court at Nagender’s instance.
INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN MATTERS AND PARLIAMENT’S ROLE
The Union government and Parliament should therefore take the Supreme Court’s observations seriously and examine whether the present adjudicatory arrangement should continue unchanged.
One possibility previously discussed by the Supreme Court is an independent adjudicatory mechanism rather than leaving the final decision exclusively to the presiding officer.
Parliament could also consider a clear statutory time limit so that a disputed legislator cannot effectively enjoy the benefit of delay for a substantial part of the legislative term.
The precise solution deserves full parliamentary debate. But continued inaction is itself a choice.
The central question is ultimately a simple one. If a representative elected on one party’s mandate wishes to transfer allegiance to another, how should the Constitution protect both the freedom of the legislator and the integrity of the voter’s verdict?
The Danam Nagender judgment has brought that question back into public view. Parliament should use the occasion not merely to watch another round of partisan accusations, but to revisit whether the machinery created to combat defection is still equal to the task.
– Ends
(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
