A STUDY OF THE POLITICS DEFECTION AND ALLEGIANCE IN INDIA

The dictionary meaning of defection is falling away from allegiance to leader, party, religion or duty, desertion, apostasy. Political defection is the phenomenon by which a legislator who has been elected on a ticket of a political party changes his party allegiance without resigning his seat in the legislature. Floor crossing is another term used to denote the same phenomenon. Dr. Subhash Kashyap has defined political defection in the following words, “Unless otherwise stated, the term defection in this study should be understood to mean any change of political label and should include all cases such as: (a) that of leaving a particular party after being elected as a legislator on its ticket and joining another party, (b) of resigning from the party, but remaining independent thereafter, or (c) of joining a particular political party after being elected as an independent. Legislators who vote against their party in the legislature on basic issues without actually resigning from the party should nonetheless be deemed to be defectors. Irrespective of its dictionary meaning here, the term defection would thus mean and include both an act of disaffection with one party or independent platform as also of developing a new political allegiance either by outright joining the other party or by voting with it and against one's own party. It would cover chances of party affiliation both from the opposition to the government side or vice versa as also changes as between the parties on the same side of the House, i.e., between the Constituent units of a coalition government or between the different parties sitting on the opposition benches.” Keywords : Defection, Political, Joining, Leaving, Independent, Opposition