News Mania Desk/Piyal Chatterjee/5th September 2024
The Himachal Pradesh Assembly passed an amended bill on Wednesday that will ban legislators disqualified under the anti-defection law from receiving their pensions, an unprecedented action.
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu tightened the screws on defectors on Tuesday, introducing the Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly (Allowances and Pension of Members) Amendment Bill, 2024, which would stop MLAs from leaving parties by taking away their pension.
The bill states that “A person shall not be entitled to a pension under the Act if he has been disqualified under the Constitution’s tenth schedule (anti-defection law) at any point in time.” Additionally, the bill contains measures for recovering parliamentarians’ pensions to which they are no longer entitled as a result of this alteration.
Every legislator who has served for a period of time up to five years is eligible for a pension of Rs 36,000 per month under Section 6B of the Act. As to Section 6(e) of the law, each legislator shall receive a monthly pension of Rs. 1,000 for each year that they serve beyond their first term.
Preventing political defections is the goal of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, commonly referred to as the “Anti-Defection Law.” In 1985, Parliament passed the anti-defection bill.
In February of this year, six Congress MLAs—Sudhir Sharma, Ravi Thakur, Rajinder Rana, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Chetanya Sharma, and Devinder Kumar—were disqualified under the anti-defection law for ignoring a party directive by not participating in the voting process during the budget session for 2024-25 and the debates on a cut motion.
