Should the Speaker continue to be the adjudicating authority under the Tenth Schedule? Evaluate the case for an independent tribunal.

The Tenth Schedule was added by the 52nd Amendment in 1985. Under it, the Speaker or Chairman decides whether a legislator has defected, and courts can review that order only after it is made [2]. Long delays and partisan rulings have turned this arrangement into a weak point of the law. That makes a strong case for moving adjudication to an independent body.

Case for retaining the Speaker

• Legislative autonomy: The House settles its own membership, which keeps the executive and the courts out of its internal affairs.
• Existing safeguard: Kihoto Hollohan (1992) treats the Speaker as a tribunal whose order is open to judicial review [2].

Why the Speaker model has faltered

• Conflict of interest: The Law Commission (2015) noted that the Speaker is elected by the House majority and is usually the ruling party's nominee [2].
• Strategic delay: The law sets no deadline for decisions. The SC therefore had to impose a three-month limit in 2020 (Keisham Meghachandra Singh) [2].
• Damaged office: PRS observes that fights over forming or saving governments have subverted the Speaker's office [1].

Evaluating an independent tribunal

Merits

• Expert consensus: The Dinesh Goswami Committee (1990), the Law Commission (1999) and the NCRWC (2002) all recommended that the President or Governor decide such cases on the binding advice of the ECI [2].
• Speed and credibility: A neutral body with fixed timelines would remove the delay that keeps defectors in office.

Limits

• Who appoints matters: If the executive picks the members, the bias simply moves from the Speaker to the government.
• Root cause untouched: The Y.B. Chavan Committee found that 542 MLAs changed sides between 1951 and 1967 [1]. The offer of office, and the option to resign and re-contest, lie beyond any adjudicator's reach.
• Needs amendment: This needs a constitutional amendment, which ruling parties have little reason to pass.

Verdict: The Speaker should not remain the final adjudicator. An ECI-advised authority that must decide within a fixed time, with its orders open to review by the courts, is the better design.

Moving adjudication away from the Speaker would make defection cases faster and more credible, but it cannot end defections by itself. It works best alongside limits on rewarding defectors with office. That package would protect the voter's mandate and the neutrality of the Chair, and it would carry forward the Goswami Committee's long-standing advice.