Enacted through the 52nd Constitutional Amendment in 1985, the Tenth Schedule was a direct response to the “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” culture of the 1960s and 1970s, when legislators switched sides with alarming frequency, toppling governments overnightMukul Roy, a senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader in West Bengal, was elected as a BJP MLA from Krishnanagar Uttar in the 2021 Assembly elections. He publicly defected to the TMC on June 11, 2021, announcing his switch at a press conference at TMC headquarters in the presence of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and party General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee. This move violated the anti-defection provisions under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which disqualifies legislators who voluntarily give up membership of the party on whose ticket they were elected.

The case was initiated by BJP Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, who filed a disqualification petition with the Assembly Speaker on June 17, 2021. The Speaker, Biman Banerjee, dismissed the plea in 2024, citing insufficient evidence of voluntary resignation from the BJP. Adhikari challenged this in the Calcutta High Court. However, on November 13, 2025, a Division Bench of the Calcutta High Court (Justices Debangsu Basak and Md. Shabbar Rashidi) ruled in Adhikari's favor, disqualifying Roy as an MLA effective from June 11, 2021.

The court held that Roy's public announcement and TMC's welcome constituted voluntary abandonment of BJP membership, incurring immediate disqualification. Subsequent events, such as Roy's appointment as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (traditionally an opposition role), did not retroactively validate his status. The Speaker's decision was "perverse" and demonstrated partisan delay, undermining the anti-defection law's intent to curb horse-trading.

Case of the 10 Telangana MLAs Who defected from BRS to Congress

In the aftermath of the December 2023 Telangana Assembly elections—where Congress won 64 seats and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) dropped to 39—10 BRS MLAs defected to the ruling Congress between March and June 2024 without resigning their seats. This was perceived as a strategy to weaken BRS further and potentially enable a merger of the BRS legislature party into Congress (requiring two-thirds support under anti-defection rules).

BRS filed disqualification petitions with Assembly Speaker Gaddam Prasad Kumar in June–July 2024, alleging violation of the Tenth Schedule. The Speaker delayed action, prompting BRS (led by K.T. Rama Rao) and BJP MLA Alleti Maheshwar Reddy to approach the Telangana High Court and Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has set an October 31, 2025, deadline for the Speaker to decide, extended now to early 2026. These two episodes have reignited a three-decade-old debate: Does India’s anti-defection law serve its purpose, or has it become a tool selectively wielded?

Enacted through the 52nd Constitutional Amendment in 1985, the Tenth Schedule was a direct response to the “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” culture of the 1960s and 1970s, when legislators switched sides with alarming frequency, toppling governments overnight. The law disqualifies an MP or MLA if they voluntarily give up membership of their original party or vote against party directives in the House (except when explicitly permitted).

A critical exception, however, allows defection if two-thirds of a legislature party merges with another outfit—a provision meant to distinguish individual opportunism from legitimate party realignment. The Speaker of the House is designated as the adjudicating authority, a choice rooted in parliamentary tradition but increasingly criticized for politicization.

The Mukul Roy verdict underscores the law’s potential bite when courts step in. The Calcutta High Court held that Roy’s press conference alongside Mamata Banerjee constituted “voluntary giving up” of BJP membership, regardless of formal resignation. It rejected the Speaker’s reliance on Roy’s later appointment as Public Accounts Committee chairman—an opposition role—as evidence of continued BJP affiliation. “The law does not require a resignation letter; conduct suffices,” the bench observed. Legal scholars hailed the ruling as an assertion of judicial review over Speaker inaction, arguing it restores the Tenth Schedule’s original deterrent effect.

Yet the Telangana case exposes the law’s Achilles’ heel: the Speaker’s near-absolute discretion and susceptibility to partisan delay. Eight of the ten BRS defectors submitted affidavits in September 2025 claiming they merely “met” Chief Minister Revanth Reddy for constituency development, not defected. BRS countered with videos of Congress flag-hoisting and social media posts flaunting the hand symbol. The Speaker sought extensions twice, prompting the Supreme Court to warn on July 31, 2025, that “dilly-dallying defeats the law’s object.”

Critics across the ideological spectrum identify structural flaws. First, the two-thirds merger loophole has been weaponised to orchestrate mass defections under the guise of “merger.” In 2019, 15 of 18 Congress-JD(S) MLAs in Karnataka resigned en masse, collapsing the government and paving the way for BJP’s return—technically outside the anti-defection net since they quit rather than switched. Second, the Speaker’s role invites bias. Former Chief Election Commissioner S.Y. Quraishi advocates replacing the Speaker with an independent tribunal. Constitutional lawyer Sanjay Hegde counters that judicial overreach risks politicizing the judiciary instead.

At the same time, there is another section of political and legal experts who opine that while the anti-defection law assumes parties are monolithic while  Indian politics is “coalitional and fluid.” Ultimately, the anti-defection law is neither panacea nor paper tiger. Reform proposals abound: independent tribunals, fixed tenures for Speakers, mandatory by-elections, or even proportional representation to reduce individual leverage. As India progresses toward simultaneous polls and coalition complexities, the law’s next move may well determine whether “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” remains a phenomenon of the past or a recurring episode.