HC sets aside disqualification of MLAs The Patna High Court has set aside the Bihar Assembly Speaker’s November order, disqualifying four rebel MLAs on the grounds of “anti-party activities” and “voluntary surrender of membership.” Background: Four JD(U) MLAs were disqualified from Bihar Assembly for anti-party activities, including cross voting in Rajya Sabha election. After the MLAs allegedly cross-voted during the Rajya Sabha by-poll in June last, the Speaker on November 1 terminated their membership and divested them of all facilities available to legislators. The speaker had disqualified them under the provisions of Anti defection law. The MLAs had challenged the ruling in the High Court. HC’s observations: Defection and dissent were not synonymous, and what the MLAs had done during the Rajya Sabha by-poll was “dissent, and it does not come under the anti-defection law.” The MLAs had faith in the party and did not defect. Isolated act of dissent, and nothing further to add, cannot amount to voluntary surrender of membership.

1. The antidefection lawThe antidefection law
The anti-defection law
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3.  SC’s interpretation on ‘Voluntarily giving up’ phrase:
 The Supreme Court, in the Ravi Naik vs. Union of India case, has interpreted the
phrase ‘voluntarily gives up his membership.’ It says: “The words ‘voluntarily gives
up his membership’ are not synonymous with ‘resignation’ and have a wider
connotation. A person may voluntarily give up his membership of a political party
even though he has not tendered his resignation from the membership of that party.
 Even in the absence of a formal resignation from membership, an inference can be
drawn from the conduct of a member that he has voluntarily given up his membership
of the political party to which he belongs.
 In another judgment in the case of Rajendra Singh Rana vs. Swami Prasad Maurya
and Others, the Supreme Court held that the act of giving a letter requesting the
Governor to call upon the leader of the other side to form a Government itself would
amount to an act of voluntarily giving up membership of the party on whose ticket the
said members had got elected.

4. Why in news?????Why in news?????
HC sets aside disqualification of MLAs
 The Patna High Court has set aside the Bihar Assembly Speaker’s November order,
disqualifying four rebel MLAs on the grounds of “anti-party activities” and “voluntary
surrender of membership.”
Background:
 Four JD(U) MLAs were disqualified from Bihar Assembly for anti-party activities,
including cross voting in Rajya Sabha election.
 After the MLAs allegedly cross-voted during the Rajya Sabha by-poll in June last, the
Speaker on November 1 terminated their membership and divested them of all facilities
available to legislators.
 The speaker had disqualified them under the provisions of Anti defection law.
 The MLAs had challenged the ruling in the High Court.
 HC’s observations:
 Defection and dissent were not synonymous, and what the MLAs had done during the
Rajya Sabha by-poll was “dissent, and it does not come under the anti-defection law.”
 The MLAs had faith in the party and did not defect. Isolated act of dissent, and nothing
further to add, cannot amount to voluntary surrender of membership.