How does a split in a state's ruling party affect legislative stability and the working of the anti-defection law? Discuss with reference to recent instances.

The Tenth Schedule, inserted by the 52nd Amendment (1985), was meant to insulate legislatures from defection-driven instability [1]. Yet a vertical split in a state's ruling party strains both the government's working majority and the machinery meant to police defection, as recent instances show.

Impact on legislative stability

• Erosion of the working majority: the ruling party's floor strength fragments overnight, forcing floor tests, resignations or government collapse — as in the 2022 Shiv Sena split that ended the Maha Vikas Aghadi government [3].
• Breakdown of the whip: rival claimants issue conflicting whips; the Supreme Court in Subhash Desai (2023) clarified that the political party, not the legislature party, appoints the whip, but only after the government had already changed [3].
• Partisan strain on constitutional offices: the Governor's discretion to summon a floor test and the Speaker's conduct become contested; the Court held the Governor lacked objective material to doubt the incumbent's majority [3].
• Live instance: the ongoing Trinamool Congress split in West Bengal, with a rival faction claiming most sitting MLAs, has unsettled the ruling party ahead of Assembly bypolls [4].

Impact on the working of the anti-defection law

• The "split" defence was deleted by the 91st Amendment; only a two-thirds merger is exempt, so factions avoid disqualification by claiming to be the original party rather than admitting defection [1].
• Speaker's delay: no timeline binds disqualification decisions, letting a defecting bloc govern while petitions remain pending [1][3].
• Parallel forum: under Paragraph 15, Symbols Order, 1968, the ECI decides rival claims to the name and symbol on a test of organisational and legislative majority, and may freeze the symbol in the interim [2][4] — an outcome that can effectively pre-empt the Speaker's process.

Splits thus convert a numbers question into a multi-forum contest. Time-bound, reasoned adjudication of disqualification petitions by an independent authority, ECI scrutiny of organisational and not merely legislative strength, and genuine intra-party democracy would restore the Tenth Schedule's original promise of stable, mandate-respecting government.