On March 28, amidst the nationwide lockdown, Manipur Assembly Speaker Y Khemchand Singh finally took a decision he has been dithering for three years and disqualified Congress MLA Thounaojam Shyamkumar, who defected to the ruling BJP immediately after the election in the midst of the race to form the next government. The BJP ultimately formed the government and Shyamkumar was rewarded with the plum cabinet portfolio of Environment and Forest Minister. The Speaker’s decision was quite obviously prompted by a sensational interim ruling by the Supreme Court on the disqualification case on March 18 forbidding Shyamkumar to either enter the Manipur Assembly complex or to continue as minister.
Just for a brief recap, Shyamkumar was elected on a Congress ticket from Andro in the 2017 Manipur Assembly election. The verdict in that election was hung, with 28 of the Assembly’s 60 seats going to Congress and 21 to its nearest rival BJP. Congress needed the support of three MLAs from outside the party to reach the majority mark, while the BJP needed 10. However, even as the state waited for the parties in the fray to work out post-poll alliances in the contest to form the next government, Shaymkumar switched sides and joined the BJP camp. For reasons inadequately explained, Governor Najma Heptullah broke tradition and invited not Congress which was the single largest party, but BJP to stake claim to form the government. The BJP managed this, enlisting the support of practically all the rest of the MLAs, leaving the Congress sorely licking its wounds with just 27 left in its camp.
Expectedly, the Congress filed for action by the Assembly Speaker against Shyamkumar as per the provisions of the 10th Schedule. In the weeks that followed, seven more Congress MLAs joined the ruling camp. The Congress has filed for action against these defectors as well under the same law, and it remains to be seen if the Speaker will need another nudging from the apex court to come to a decision on their case as well.
In the Shyamkumar case, in the three years that have gone by, no tangible action was forthcoming even after the matter reached the Manipur High Court first. The HC too severely reprimanded the Speaker for this inaction, even calling it shameful but left the matter of disqualification to the Speaker’s tribunal. When nothing moved after this, the opposition took the matter to the SC. The SC first tried prodding the Speaker to swing into action and dispose the case as per the provisions of the 10th Schedule.
However, three months later when it became apparent the Speaker had no intention of honouring the SC advice, the court dropped the March 18 bombshell, directing Shyamkumar be banned from entering the Assembly and for him to be removed from ministership, using the rarely used extraordinary power given to the SC under Article 142 of the Constitution. The SC indicated it will be waiting for the verdict of the Speaker’s tribunal before the matter comes up before the court again on March 30.
One thing is certain. This entire episode is disgraceful. What has come up for question is the manner in which not just the spirit of the law but also the letter of the law has been trifled and made irrelevant. From this standpoint, the SC’s harsh interim ruling can be seen as an effort to bring the letter of the law to be a guarantee of the spirit of the law as it should be. In this particular case, it would need no elaboration that the spirit of the law is to ensure no defection by an MLA is allowed without penalty. The 10th Schedule, or the Anti-Defection Law, is the legal means to arbitrate such perceived breaches of the sense of order and justice by MLA defections in democracy’s power struggle. But as it turned out, the letter of this law was being literally and wilfully divested from its spirit in the current case.
Few have explained this relationship between the letter and the spirit of law better than Devdutt Patnaik, author of several books in Indian mythology, including most relevant to this article, ‘Myth=Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology’. Very briefly, Patnaik uses the Hindu mythologies of Ramayana and Mahabharat to illustrate this equation. In the age of innocence and truth, it was possible for Ram to insist on strict adherence to the letter of the law in the faith that this will always be in the interest of the spirit of that law. By contrast, in the age of experience and lost innocence that the Mahabharat was set against, crafty interpretations of the letter of the law often created dichotomy between it and the spirit of law. Hence, there were those who would break the spirit of the law without even disowning the letters of the law.
Duryadhan is cited as an example of such violators. He is not known for breaking the law but often crushed its spirit even while adhering to the law. After winning Draupadi in a dice game, he decided to exercise his right of ownership over her to vengefully humiliate her and his cousins. When this dichotomy becomes the norm, God manifests as somebody who would go to the extent of breaking the letters of bad laws to ensure the spirit of the law is intact. Hence, Krishna intervened and ensured that Draupadi’s humiliation never happened. Those familiar with this mythology would know that Krishna is known for breaking the letters of many laws, but always for the end of preserving their spirit.
The disqualification case in this sense has brought to the fore how a piece of legislation can be weak, or outrightly bad. The way forward in these cases, hence , would have to be to work for reformations of the letters of these laws so that they continue to serve the purpose they were meant to – be the guarantee for the spirit of the law.
Those in Northeast would not find this hard to comprehend. The protest against AFSPA can be seen in the same light. The AFSPA is law, but it more often than not, breaks rather than guarantees justice. There is also another kind of law breaker. These are people in power for whom neither the letter nor the spirit of law matters. For them, what they say and do becomes law, both in letter and spirit. No marks for guessing that these are what despots are made of. In Devdutt’s own analogy, Ravan qualifies to be in this category. In Manipur, it would indeed be difficult to decide which of these analogies is closest to what are happening. The fear is — the understanding of power both by those in power as well as their subjects is closer to what Devdutt’s Ravan understood power to be.
PRADIP PHANJOUBAM
Senior journalist and author of ‘The Northeast Question: Conflicts and Frontiers’.