People's Democracy

HARYANA

Verdict on Defections a Jolt to Congress

HAILING the recent interim order issued by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on defection of elected representatives of the people, the CPI(M) has expressed the hope that it would be helpful in curbing this grave political menace of defections. Declaring five legislators who were elected on the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) symbol, as unattached MLAs in the Haryana state assembly, the High Court decision has given a severe jolt to the Congress party which took recourse to the shameless practice of encouraging horse trading in order to muster a majority in the assembly. 

It is to be recalled here that the Congress party had got only 40 seats in a 90 member assembly in the 2009 elections, while the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), the main opposition party, had got 31, the HJC won 6 seats, the BJP 4 and independents 7. But then the Haryana chief minister Bhupender Singh Hooda engineered defections from the HJC and allured five of its MLAs to Congress fold. This left behind their party chief Kuldeep Bishnoi alone.

Through a statement issued from Rohtak on December 22 by its Haryana state secretary Inderjit Singh, the CPI(M) has demanded a decision by Vidhan Sabha speaker without further delay to disqualify all the five legislators who inflicted injury to the norms of parliamentary democracy for the sake of personal benefits. The party reiterated its opinion that the anti-defection law must be suitably amended so that too much time is not taken in penalising the elected representatives who are guilty of defection.