270. A mockery of democracy 

Once again, India’s false democracy is in full bloom. Facilitating it is the most ‘lucrative’ political party that has the mandate to run the country and that presents itself as the most honest, morality-driven, and patriotic national party.

Seven Rajya Sabha members of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with no base in the state of Punjab from which they were sent, have proudly paraded themselves before the president of the world’s biggest political party and were surprisingly accepted by him. 

So overnight, all the trash they had been talking about the party they joined has been thrown out the window, and now they will say only Jai Sriram. The Party might have accepted this fact, but people never will.

These seven power-hungry individuals have taken advantage of the anti-defection law enacted in 1985, which was intended to prevent political defection. However, the anti-defection law appears to have been enacted not to stop political defection but rather to facilitate it. 

The group of seven has reportedly sent a letter to Rajya Sabha chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan, asserting that they make up two-thirds of the AAP members in the Rajya Sabha. As a result, they argue that the disqualification clause under paragraph four of the 10th Schedule of the anti-defection law should not apply to them. 

An act of law designed to address the problem of political defections, which could threaten the core of democracy and its principles, has surprisingly come to their aid. This demonstrates how laws can be manipulated for personal benefit.

A constitution bench of the Supreme Court has described the immorality of political defection in the following words: “moral and democratic principles are compromised when a legislator shifts allegiance after the electorate votes for that legislator on the belief that they represent the ideology of a certain party.  

Logically, the seven who voluntarily gave up their membership in their original political party should be immediately disqualified. 

In the past, because the law itself was passed by power-hungry members of the parliament, they coolly created a loophole for themselves. 

Although presented as a progressive step for public consumption, it mainly served their own interests. The key loophole, mentioned in paragraph three, states that if they claim to belong to a faction that emerged within the party due to a split and that this faction makes up one-third of the legislative party, they will not face disqualification. 

The breakaway of one-third of the legislators, in dissent against a tyrannical party leadership, is also unacceptable. The answer should be: "Form a party and go to the people."

Even if examined objectively, the group of seven was sent to the Rajya Sabha merely because of their personal equation with the party leader and for their role as arrangers of funds and facilitators for the party. 

One individual in the group is on the Enforcement Directorate’s list, and his homes and offices were raided last week. Therefore, the reason for his actions is clear to all.

Personally, I am astonished by how easily one changes allegiance at the drop of a hat. I have never liked the ideology of the Congress Party, even though I come from a family of staunch Congress supporters. 

My hatred goes back to the very day the Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British Civil Service officer, with Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee serving as its first president. It remains to this day. 

Between MK Gandhi's time and the rise of the family that has come to treat it as its property, a lot of water has flowed in the Ganga, but I have never cared and literally despise the party and its members. 

I just can’t imagine myself supporting that party because I have my own ideology and a conscience that guides me, something professional politicians have never had.

How do these people suddenly go from hating the RSS’s concept of Hinduism to becoming lovers of it? 

Most of all, I am unhappy with the party that has gladly accepted them, and I am afraid that such actions only puzzle its supporters and would be very harmful to its future. For a short-term gain, it is heavily losing its supporters.