India, April 28 -- On Friday, seven Rajya Sabha MPs from the Aam Aadmi Party joined the Bharatiya Janata Party and termed their move a "merger" within Section 4 of the Tenth Schedule of Constitution which prohibits such defections. This purported merger of two-thirds of the MPs, in the absence of a merger between the original political parties, raises a significant constitutional issue of subversion of the anti-defection laws . It is yet another instance in a long line of contested mergers within legislature parties, including the so called "mergers" of Telugu Desam Party MLAs with the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Andhra Pradesh (2016), TDP Rajya Sabha MPs with BJP (2019), Bahujan Samaj Party MLAs with the Congress in Rajasthan (2019), Co...