The resign-and-return industry: a bypoll is what seat-trading costs the rest of us

There is an industry in Tamil Nadu politics that has no name on any board and no licence, but everyone knows how it works: win a seat, resign it, switch sides, and contest it again. Today, Madurantakam and Dharapuram are voting for the second time in five months because two MLAs — Maragatham Kumaravel and P. Sathyabama — resigned on May 25, less than three weeks after the people of their constituencies sent them to the Assembly. Let us be precise about what happened. The voters of Madurantakam and Dharapuram chose AIADMK candidates in April. Those candidates then took their seats to the ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam and now ask the same voters to validate the transaction. The Election Commission must conduct a full by-election. Thousands of polling staff must be deployed. Security forces must seal two constituencies. A public holiday must be declared. And the bill — for the polling booths, the EVMs, the staff, the security — is paid by the taxpayer, who was never consulted about the deal. This is not defection; it is a resale. The voter's mandate is treated as a personal asset the winner can carry across the aisle, and the democratic process is reduced to a cash register that rings up the cost of the transfer. Even TTV Dhinakaran — no friend of sanctimony — has demanded Election Commission action against legislators who resign shortly after being elected. When the system's own insiders call the practice corrupt, the rest of us should not need more evidence. Periyar asked a simple question of every political arrangement: whom does it serve? A bypoll triggered by a voluntary resignation serves exactly two people: the resigner, who upgrades his position, and the ruling party, which buys a stronger majority. It does not serve the worker who loses a day's wage to vote again, or the farmer who watches his constituency become a laboratory for party engineering instead of a place that gets roads, water and schools. Anna warned that democracy is strangled not only by dictators but by the paperwork of manipulation — by procedures hollowed out until only the form remains. A resignation accepted, a bypoll ordered, a candidate re-elected: every form is correct, and every substance is a transaction. The remedy is not complicated. A legislator who resigns within the first year of a term without a change in party due to a merger should face a cooling-off period — no contesting the resulting bypoll. The Election Commission should name the cost of each manufactured bypoll and bill it, morally if not legally, to the parties that manufactured it. And voters should treat every resign-and-return candidate as what he or she is: a dealer asking for a second signature on a contract the voter never signed. Today the voters of Madurantakam and Dharapuram will decide. Whatever they choose on October 9, the question hanging over the ballot box is bigger than two seats: how many more elections will the public be forced to fund before the seat-traders are made to pay for the ones they cause?