In his address, Datar said that after 1985, it was evident that the anti-defection law in the Tenth Schedule was not a solution for defection of lawmakers.
On analysing anti-defection case law, he found that the entire controversy was centered on the second paragraph of the Tenth Schedule, which did not specify the role of the Speaker while hearing cases arising from political party splits.
Datar referred to judgments to point out that theoretically, a Speaker was expected to be impartial. However, by nature, the Speaker is also a member of a ruling party and empirically found to be partial.
“Most important difficulty in all the judgments I have studied is that the decision is not taken on time and the decision, if taken, is completely partial. The framers of the Constitution said these are all eminent constitutional offices and they will do their duty in an expeditious manner, but it has not happened at all,” he said.
Source: Barandbench
