Defection: Raghav Chadha used legal route he once sought to restrict

Irony died a thousand deaths when Raghav Chadha switched over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with six other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs.

Having proposed a constitutional amendment to strengthen the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution i.e. the anti-defection law, Chadha ended up using the same legal route to join the saffron party.

In 2022, Chadha introduced a Private Member's Bill in the Upper House proposing to amend Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule to raise the threshold for a ‘split’ from 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a party's legislators. He had also proposed a six-year election ban for political defectors.

Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule is an exception to the anti-defection law which allows members to avoid disqualification if at least two-thirds of the legislators in that party merge with another party.

In a setback to the AAP, seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs -- Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Swati Maliwal, Vikramjit Singh Sahney and Rajinder Gupta – defected to the BJP last week, taking advantage of the exception.

Having found their defection letter to be in accordance with the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan on Monday accepted their merger with the BJP even as AAP’s demand for their disqualification remains pending.

Tabled in August 2022, Chadha’s Bill hangs fire. Had it been passed, it would have been a bit difficult for him and his fellow AAP MPs to join the BJP.