PIL filed in Bombay HC against provision in Constitution allowing split, merger of political parties

Bombay High Court

A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Bombay High Court seeking that a paragraph providing for the "split and merger" of political parties in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution be declared as illegal and ultra vires and in contravention of its basic structure.

The petitioner Meenakshi Menon, a media and marketing professional and a founder trustee of NGO Vanshakti, has claimed that this provision was used by politicians for group defections and voters are betrayed because of such unabated group defections.

"Unabated group defections in the form of splits and mergers under paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution has become a part of political culture with complete disregard to the act of betrayal to voters," the PIL said.

Defections in the form of split and merger under the provision is leading to further alienation of the general public to the process of elections itself, wherein thousands of crores of taxpayers' money are spent without any accountability, it said.

Advocates Ahmed Abdi and Eknath Dhokale on Monday mentioned the PIL before a division bench of Chief Justice D K Upadhyaya and Justice Arif Doctor.

The bench directed the lawyers to first remove the objections raised in the plea by the HC registry department and then mention the plea again.

The petition has sought that the court declare that legislators or groups of legislators defecting from the original political party are not entitled to participate in the proceedings of House or to hold any Constitutional posts until the issue relating to their disqualification is decided finally.

Menon said the petition was filed in the backdrop of the June 2022 Maharashtra political crisis, which started when current Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and a large number of MLAs from Uddhav Thackeray's Shiv Sena defected, leading to the collapse of the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government.

"Recently, Ajit Pawar's rebellion against his uncle and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar has a lot of similarities with how Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde rebelled against the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA government," the plea said.