Srimathi VenkatachariT he idiom ‘Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram’ began in 1967 when Haryana MLA Gaya Lal changed parties three times in a single day. It was meant as satire. It has become administrative routine. An MLA is elected on one party’s symbol, manifesto and promises. He resigns mid-term, joins another party, contests again, and calls it strategy or conscience. The voter calls it déjà vu. The bill goes to the public exchequer.The Constitution allows resignation. It does not sponsor it. Article 190(3)(b) protects the right to resign. It does not create a taxpayer-funded right to trigger elections. The anti-defection law was meant to stop this churn. It did not. It only changed the method. No more open floor-crossing. Now it is resignation, vacancy, by-election, comeback in a new colour. Same politics. New route.A by-election is not a minor administrative event. It is full state machinery in motion — officers deployed, police mobilised, EVMs transported, polling infrastructure activated, crores spent. All triggered not by necessity, but by political choice. Why should the public pay for that choice?Freedom to resign is not in dispute. But freedom does not mean freedom from consequences. When a representative abandons the mandate on which he was elected, the resulting by-election is not fate. It is the foreseeable cost of a voluntary act. Between resignation and by-election lies a forgotten interregnum. The constituency is vacant but not neutral. In practice, it often becomes politically active rather than silent. Announcements increase. Schemes appear. Funds are released. Till the by-election is over, it should not become a theatre for discretionary spending dressed up as development. Neutrality is rarely enforced in spirit. The imbalance is simple. The voter elects Party A, the MLA shifts to Party B, the voter votes again, the state pays again.Three truths sit underneath this cycle. First, public office is trust, not property. It is held for citizens, not for strategic exit and re-entry. Second, representation is collective. It is not personal capital that can be withdrawn mid-term without consequence to those who conferred it. Third, accountability without consequence is incomplete. If resignation triggers an election but carries no cost, political freedom becomes one-sided: gain is private, burden is public.Courts have long recognised the fragility of this balance. In Kihoto Hollohan vs Zachillhu, Supreme Court upheld the anti-defection law to preserve legislative integrity. In Nabam Rebia, it warned against instability engineered from within institutions. In Shrimanth Balasaheb Patil, it dealt with resignations that altered legislative strength midstream. The concern is consistent: electoral mandates cannot be casually rewritten. But there is a quieter distortion these cases do not directly address — the fiscal one.Recent developments in Tamil Nadu have brought this into sharp focus. Within weeks of the 2026 elections, four MLAs resigned for political reasons. The chief minister also vacated one of his seats after retaining another constituency. Five constituencies were pushed into by-elections almost immediately. The cost is direct, the exchequer funds fresh elections, officials are redeployed, security is tightened, the Model Code of Conduct kicks in, freezing new announcements and slowing administrative work, constituencies enter a governance pause.For voters, disruption is immediate, campaigns return soon after elections, development follow-through weakens, citizens are asked to repeat a process they believed was complete. It is this pattern, rapid resignations followed by expensive re-elections that has revived calls for electoral reform and deterrent mechanisms against premature exits driven by political strategy rather than necessity.No one is suggesting that resignations be banned, that would freeze democracy. The issue is narrower — should the cost of triggering a by-election remain entirely externalised to the taxpayer? A modest correction is possible. Where a legislator voluntarily resigns within a defined period and joins another party, a portion of by-election expenditure could be recovered, or an accountability levy imposed before re-contesting. Not punishment. Responsibility aligned with causation.Safeguards are essential. No liability in cases of death, illness, disqualification, constitutional appointment or unavoidable exit. The aim is not to deter political movement, but to distinguish necessity from strategy.In most areas of public life, cost follows causation. In politics, that link has weakened, the result is a system where electoral disruption is socialised, but political gain is individualised. That inversion sits uneasily with democratic fairness.Democracy will always allow an “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” moment. People will change sides, politics will shift, but it does not have to finance every such shift.(The writer is an advocate at Madras high court)
