Imagine you are working at a company for years, but one day you decide to quit that company and join another; the reason could be anything, perhaps a hike in pay, a better position, or even just the change of environment. You simply resign from your current work and join the other organization without any tussle unless you don’t follow compliances. However, it is not that simple if your job is that of a politician and your organization is a political party; it is called ‘defection’ in the political terminology.
Earlier, until the anti-defection law came into existence, there was no legal hurdle in the defection. Although the issue that arose due to defection was the horse-trading of MPs and MLAs to cross-vote on the floor of the house. The candidate had won the election on the ticket of party ‘A’ and now defected or cross-voted in favour of party ‘B,’ which had become a persistent issue. It was seen as the fraud or evasion of democracy. However, in theory, people vote for their representatives in the representative democracy, and it is upon the discretion of that representative to vote for or support whomsoever he thinks appropriate. But in practice, democracy does not function that way; there are parties that put their candidates in every constituency, and the party with the majority of constituencies won apparently forms the government. It has become such a conventional fact that in most of the cases people don’t even know the name of their representative; they just vote for the party that aligns with their thoughts. Thus, if a candidate has merely won the election in the name of the party he contested for, now defecting to the other party after getting elected could be very obviously seen as a scam to his old party and, most importantly, to the people of his constituency. Governments spent years in this dilemma until the passage of the anti-defection bill, which provided that any member defecting after the election would lose their seat, and the only exception would be if two-thirds of the legislators of the original party agreed to a merger with the other party. This law restricted the frequency of defection but did not fully eliminate it; the exception provided was often used by the influential leaders to defect to the other party without losing their seat.
Now, let’s try to understand the major reasons behind the defection of the politicians. Surely, there is no single reason or even countable reasons; everyone does have their own justification for the defection, but the topmost reasons are easily visible. A majority of the politicians change their party to get a better position of authority. Someone wanting to be chief minister, someone a cabinet minister, or someone perhaps even prime minister, apparently. But this is the case with the leaders with some serious influence over the public; newly elected MPs or MLAs often switch their side for monetary allurement. Whenever there is no absolute mandate to one party, this defection game gets at its peak. The powerful and mostly incumbent party tries to horse-trade members to save their power or establish their government. One rare but considerable reason for the defection could be the real change or evolution of thoughts; we can’t put it completely out of the picture. Obviously, it is rare but exists.
Even though the anti-defection law is in force, it does not seem unavoidable. Especially in smaller states where the two-thirds number is not too big to allude to. There has been very wide criticism of defection in the public; people often find it to be dirty politics or fraud with the people. It is not very wonderful to see someone with the harshest of words for the ruling party join the party the very next morning. Even sometimes you see that few people are always in the government, as they change their sides as per convenience. It really discomforts people when a politician who had been alleged with corruption, loot, and what not by a party is welcomed the next day by the same party with a bouquet of flowers and a shawl. Also, one of the major reasons behind the switching of the party is fear of getting charged by the agencies for the unlawful acts, as changing sides to the ruling party would most probably make them immune from such consequences. It is an accepted fact that defection puts a question mark on the credibility of the leader and also the party which he joins. Now, when there is an absolute backlash from the people on the defection, still, why do politicians dare to cross lines so openly? Hence, let’s move forward to look into the real picture.
Table: Major defections of the last ten-fifteen years
Politician | Defection | Immediate/Following Electoral Outcome |
|---|---|---|
Himanta Biswa Sarma | Congress → BJP (2015) | Won Jalukbari Assembly seat in 2016 and again in 2021; became Chief Minister of Assam in 2021. Re-elected in 2026. |
Jyotiraditya Scindia | Congress → BJP (2020) | Though he entered BJP via Rajya Sabha, he later won the Guna Lok Sabha seat in 2024 by a massive margin as a BJP candidate. |
Suvendu Adhikari | TMC → BJP (2020) | Defeated Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram in the 2021 Bengal Assembly election. He became chief minister of Bengal in 2026. |
Narayan Rane | Shiv Sena → Congress → BJP | Continued winning elections and became a Union Minister after joining BJP. |
Ajit Pawar | NCP → BJP-backed government (2019); later split NCP and joined NDA (2023) | Retained political relevance, remained Deputy CM, and his faction secured representation in government. |
Source: Author's compilation based on ECI election results and secondary sources.
The aforementioned table, which contains major defections of recent times, very magnificently shows that while there is a routine condemnation of the defection politics as opportunistic and unfair in public discourse, nevertheless, reality hits differently. We can see the politicians who had a leap in their careers after defection; undoubtedly there could be some adverse cases as well, but these are serious faces of the ground politics in India. They did not lose their voters even after defecting to the other party. This establishes that, irrespective of the criticism in the political discourse for defection, leaders with strong holding on their ground don’t get affected. And as we say that in democracy, the final say should be left with people, at least so far, we are not seeing people penalizing defection electorally.
— Saurabh Srivastava