Kapil Sibal argued in Kochi that the whip does not bind legislators in the United States, the United Kingdom or Europe as it does in India. The comparison needs qualifying, but the underlying point holds: India is unusual in attaching loss of the seat to a party direction, and every reform committee since 1990 has recommended narrowing it.
An independent MLA in Haryana switching sides three times gave Indian politics a phrase in 1967. Nearly sixty years, two failed Bills, one constitutional amendment and one repeal later, the same question is back before the Supreme Court. A look at how the Tenth Schedule was built and why each reform produced the next workaround.
Speaking at a talk in Kochi, Senior Advocate and Independent Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal questioned why the Supreme Court has not decided the correctness of the merger exception under Paragraph 4 of the Tenth Schedule since 2022, and argued that treating a legislature party merger as sufficient defeats the anti-defection law. The issue is pending before the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court’s 2025 landmark judgments exposed deep structural flaws in governance, from delays and institutional inertia to misuse of discretion. The Court flagged failures in federal relations, anti-defection rulings, electoral processes, tribunals, investigations, and legislative privileges.
