THE MANDATE BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE

On India’s 80th Independence Day, Restore the Legitimate Right of the Voter

As India celebrates its 80th Independence Day on August 15, there will be much to celebrate. The Tricolor will fly across the country and wherever Indians have made their homes around the world. There will be speeches about India’s economic rise, technological achievements, democratic endurance and growing stature among nations.

Celebrate them all.

But Independence Day should also be an occasion for national introspection. And there is one question that has troubled me for years:

Who owns an electoral mandate—the politician, the political party, or the people?

The answer should be beyond dispute.

The mandate belongs to the people.

Yet Indian politics has repeatedly witnessed elected representatives changing political allegiance after elections—sometimes individually, sometimes in groups large enough to alter legislative majorities, topple governments or create new ones.

We call it defection, floor-crossing and, more disturbingly, horse-trading. Behind these expressions lies a fundamental democratic wrong: the people’s verdict can effectively be altered without returning to the people.

The BJP did not invent political defection. Congress and regional parties have benefited from it too. A democratic principle cannot depend upon which party gains from its violation.

But Narendra Modi has been Prime Minister since 2014, and his government repeatedly speaks of clean governance, national renewal and India’s democratic greatness. The opportunity to undertake meaningful reform therefore rests today with his government.

On India’s 80th Independence Day, I would ask Prime Minister Modi to make one historic commitment:

Make an elected legislative mandate non-transferable between political parties without renewed electoral consent.

The principle is simple.

You are free to leave the political party to which you belong. You are free to join another party of your choice. But you are not free to carry with you the legislative seat that the electorate gave you under your former political affiliation. The moment you change that allegiance, the seat must fall vacant. If you wish to return to the legislature under your new political identity, return to the people and seek their mandate again.

This does not imprison anyone within a political party.

A legislator must remain free to think, dissent and change. A party may abandon its principles. Leadership may become unacceptable. Conscience may compel departure.

Then depart.

Join another party. Form another party. Campaign against your former colleagues.

Your conscience belongs to you. The electoral mandate does not.

A candidate normally seeks election bearing a party symbol, affiliation, platform and leadership. Some citizens vote primarily for the individual, others for the party, and many for both. No representative can therefore presume that citizens who elected Candidate A of Party X would automatically elect the same Candidate A of Party Y.

There is one democratic way to discover that.

Ask them again.

A representative has every right to reconsider political allegiance. The voter has an equal right to reconsider representation.

India enacted the anti-defection law in 1985 because political defections had become corrosive to parliamentary democracy. Yet decades later, political maneuvering involving defections, mergers, resignations and disputes over disqualification continues to test both the law and public confidence.

Why should political morality depend upon numbers?

If one legislator changes allegiance, return the mandate. If twenty change, return twenty mandates. If a large group wishes to move together, let them.

But let them face the people.

Numbers may change the arithmetic of a legislature. They must not be allowed to change the morality of a mandate.

There is another reason for reform.

Defections create circumstances in which elected representatives can acquire enormous transactional value. India has heard repeated allegations over the years—under governments of different parties—of money, ministerial positions, political favors and investigative pressure influencing political allegiance.

Not every allegation is proven. Not every defector is corrupt. Some undoubtedly act from conviction.

But democracy should not have to investigate every legislator’s soul—or every alleged transaction—to protect itself.

Good law does not merely punish corruption after the damage is done. Good law removes, wherever possible, the opportunity and incentive for corruption to occur.

Make the mandate non-transferable, and the political marketplace immediately becomes less attractive.

A rival party may persuade a legislator to join it. That is political freedom.

But it should not acquire the legislator’s seat in the bargain.

Instead, there will be an election.

And standing between the politician and political power will be the person who should never have been removed from the transaction:

the voter.

That is why what India needs is more than another anti-defection provision.

It needs the restoration of the legitimate right of the voter.

The citizen’s sovereignty does not expire when the votes are counted. If a representative fundamentally changes the political proposition upon which election was sought, the electorate must be permitted to judge that changed proposition.

And the rule must bind everyone.

BJP. Congress. Regional parties. Government. Opposition. Today’s rulers and tomorrow’s.

A reform possesses moral authority only when those making the law are prepared to surrender advantages they themselves might otherwise enjoy.

The highest proof of political principle is willingness to surrender an advantage that the existing system gives you.

That is why Prime Minister Modi has an opportunity on August 15.

From the Red Fort, let him tell India that his government will initiate the constitutional and legislative process necessary to establish one clear democratic principle:

No elected legislative mandate shall pass from one political party to another without renewed consent of the electorate.

Let there be no convenient arithmetic to defeat the principle.

No political engineering that converts one electoral verdict into another.

No transfer of the political meaning of a citizen’s vote behind closed doors.

The principle can be stated simply:

Political allegiance is transferable. The people’s mandate is not.

And I would say to every elected representative in India:

You may change your convictions.

You may change your party.

You may change your political friends.

But you cannot change my vote.

Only I can do that.

If conscience tells you to leave your party, leave.

If another party better represents your convictions, join it.

But leave my mandate behind.

Return to me. Explain why you changed. Stand before me under your new political banner.

Ask me again.

If I agree with you, I will return you to the legislature. If I do not, democracy has given its answer.

That is not punishment for defection.

That is respect for the voter.

Freedom for the representative. Sovereignty for the voter.

Eighty years after Independence, India should guarantee both.

Restore the voter’s legitimate right. Restore sanctity to the electoral mandate. And begin restoring political morality to Indian democracy.

That would indeed be an Independence Day gift worthy of the Republic.

HAPPY 80^TH INDEPENDENCE DAY OF INDIA.

JAI HIND!