Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA)

  নোটাঃ নির্বাচনী প্রহসনের “বাইরে” নাকি !? Posted on 28th April, 2026 (GMT 22:12 hrs) ABSTRACT In this sharp critique of India’s electoral system amid the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections, the author argues that elections have become fully stage-managed spectacles by PR experts, far beyond Chomsky’s 1989 idea of merely ratifying pre-selected options. He views NOTA as a purely symbolic moral protest with no real power — even if it gets the highest votes, the election is not cancelled and the top candidate still wins. The entire process is called a predetermined farce rigged by mass voter deletions (nearly 91 lakh), fake voters, EVM tampering, opaque counting, a biased Election Commission, money-muscle power, and institutional decay. Despite their differences, mainstream parties follow the same neoliberal policies and identity politics, offering no genuine choice. The essay concludes that voting is pointless; NOTA or abstention combined with demands for Right to Recall and pr...

  Democracy for Sale: Anti-Defection Law, Horse-Trading, and the Crisis of the Electoral Mandate in India Posted on 1st May, 2026 (GMT 07:03 hrs) AKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY  ⤡ ABSTRACT The Anti-Defection Law (Tenth Schedule, introduced by the 52nd Amendment 1985 and strengthened by the 91st Amendment 2003) was designed to curb opportunistic defections and safeguard the electoral mandate in India’s parliamentary democracy. Yet its critical loopholes—the two-thirds merger exception (Paragraph 4), unpenalised mass resignations, partisan Speakers, and ambiguities between organisational and legislature parties—have institutionalised sophisticated horse-trading. This article offers a doctrinal and empirical critique, centering on the Shiv Sena crisis (2022–23) and the Supreme Court’s Subhash Desai judgment (2023), which exposed how rebellion, strategic resignations, resort politics, and institutional delays enabled the toppling of a democratically elected government. Examining defecti...