Dissented, never defected, say U’khand rebel MLAs

"Deserting a government or a leader/Chief Minister does not amount to leaving the party or defection. Even the 10th Schedule of defection applies to one deserting the party and not dissent," senior advocate C A Sundaram told the single member bench of Jus

Hearing of the nine disqualified Uttarakhand Congress MLAs before the Uttarakhand High Court in Nainital will continue on Tuesday as it remained inconclusive for the second day on Monday, even as they claimed their dissent has been wrongly read as defection and that they had never joined the BJP, the main opposition party in the state Assembly. "Deserting a government or a leader/Chief Minister (by a member of a ruling party) does not amount to leaving the party or defection. Even the 10th Schedule of defection applies to one deserting the party and not dissent," senior advocate C A Sundaram told the single-member bench of Justice U C Dhyani. They had "only objected to the Speaker not following the procedure (of division of votes on the Appropriation Bill) that the majority (26 BJP and nine Congress MLAs) wanted," that did not amount to giving up the party membership, the lawyer argued, challenging the disqualification order passed by Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal. He insisted that the disqualified MLAs were not against the Congress as all that they wanted was to ‘clean up’ the party image since they felt the regime under then CM Harish Rawat "did not show the party in a good light." Sundaram said the CM and the Speaker "are assuming that the government and party are the same," but if this view was accepted then "it would be a death knell for democracy" as "then no member of ruling party would be able to criticise the government." "Dissenting against choice of CM is an essential part of intra-party democracy. You cannot disqualify someone for speaking against the CM," he submitted and insisted that even petitioning the Governor "to dismiss the government and the CM did not amount to giving up membership of the party."

"As Congressmen we continue to say that this government under this CM (Rawat) must be changed. We are saying change the CM from within the party. The Congress will not lose the right to form another government under another CM," Sundaram insisted.

He argued that dissenting against the government by a member of the ruling party was part of the ‘healthy democracy’ and would not amount to defection or leaving the party.

He pointed out that the dissident MLAs had not joined hands with the BJP as they ‘differentiated’ themselves from the BJP by sending a separate memorandum to the Governor seeking division of votes.