Key Highlights
- Tewari, who introduced the bill on last Friday (December 5, 2025) to amend the Anti-Defection Law, said his proposed legislation seeks to flag who has primacy in a democracy — the elector who stands in the sun for hours to elect his or her representative or the political party whose whip the representative becomes the helot of.
- Opinion | The hollowing out of the anti-defection law The bill, introduced by Mr.
- Tewari for the third time in Lok Sabha after 2010 and 2021, seeks to give parliamentarians the freedom to toe an independent line in voting on bills and motions other than a confidence motion, no-confidence motion, adjournment motion, money bills and financial matters that could affect the stability of a government.
- “This bill seeks to return conscience, constituency and common sense to the echelons of the legislature so that an elected representative actually functions as the representative of the people who elected him and not as an instrument of a whip issued by his party, transforming lawmakers into mere lobotomised numbers and dogmatic ciphers responding to a division bell,” he told PTI.
- The statement of objects and reasons of the bill state that it proposes to amend the Tenth Schedule to the Constitution with a view to provide for the following: “a member shall incur loss of his membership only when he votes or abstains from voting in the House with regard to a confidence motion, no-confidence motion, adjournment motion, money bill or financial matters, contrary to any direction issued in this behalf by the party to which he belongs to, and in no other case”.
