Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram: How BJP Reshaped Indian Politics By Normalising Defections

In 1967, a little-known legislator in Haryana rewrote the grammar of Indian politics. Gaya Lal switched parties three times in a fortnight, giving rise to the phrase “Aya Ram Gaya Ram”, a shorthand for political opportunism that would outlive him by decades.

What was once treated as political stigma is now routinely framed as strategic repositioning within an unevenly distributed landscape of power. And that has gotten spotlight once again with several Aam Aadmi Party MPs led by Raghav Chadha joining the BJP last week.  

When Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party to power in 2014, the verdict was understood as electoral. More than a decade on, the story of that dominance is equally about what happened between elections, of leaders crossing over, governments collapsing, and power being reassembled in motion.

The Limits of the Anti-Defection Law

Between 1967 and 1983, nearly 2,700 instances of defection were recorded at the state level, with at least 15 defectors going on to become chief ministers. This wave of political instability eventually led to the enactment of the Anti-Defection Law through the 52nd Amendment in 1985.

Despite this legal framework, circumventing the law has proved relatively easy. Even interventions by the Supreme Court have done little to curb the practice. Instead of formally defecting or voting against their party, legislators increasingly choose to resign from their seats. This tactic allows them to bypass disqualification provisions while simultaneously reducing their party’s strength in the House.

Congress as the Principal Feeder System

Data from elections held between 2016 and 2020 underscores the trend. Among 433 MPs and MLAs who switched parties and re-contested, 182 out of 405 MLAs, nearly 45%, joined the BJP. Of the 16 Rajya Sabha MPs who defected, 10, or over 60%, moved to the BJP.

The scale of this shift is measurable. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, roughly a quarter of BJP candidates were defectors from other parties, over 100 names in a list of around 430–440 candidates. Independent breakdowns similarly show that a significant share of BJP nominees in the Modi era were political imports, many joining in just the preceding five years.  This is not incidental churn but a structural feature of contemporary Indian politics.

Engineering regime change Across states—from Karnataka (2019) to Maharashtra (2022–23), defections have acted as instruments of regime change.

No party has been more affected than the Indian National Congress, which has steadily lost leaders across tiers. Congress has suffered the maximum number of defections since 2014, while the BJP was the biggest gainer since Narendra Modi became the prime minister of the country, a report by the Association for Democratic Reform (ADR) has said. Out of the total defections, nearly 35 per cent of MLAs and MPs defected from the Congress between 2014-2021, compared to a mere seven per cent defectors from the BJP, the analysis said.

Earlier, Himanta Biswa Sarma’s switch from the Congress had helped the BJP entrench itself in Assam. Others followed: Jitin Prasada moved in 2021 and was later fielded and elected on a BJP ticket. 

Here are six instances from recent history where democratically elected state governments have been toppled through defections.

1. Karnataka
In the 224-member Assembly, the majority mark is 113. The Congress-JD(S) coalition formed the government in 2018 with 115 MLAs. Within 14 months, 13 Congress MLAs and three JD(S) MLAs resigned, bringing the effective strength of the House down to 208 and reducing the majority mark to 105. The BJP, with 105 MLAs, staked claim and formed the government.

2. Madhya Pradesh
The fall of the Kamal Nath government was triggered by Jyotiraditya Scindia’s resignation from Parliament. MLAs loyal to him, including six ministers, followed suit. This led to the collapse of the Congress government and the return of a BJP government under Shivraj Singh Chouhan. Scindia was later inducted into the Union cabinet.

3. Manipur
In the 2017 Assembly elections, the Congress won 28 seats and the BJP 21 in the 60-member House, where 31 is the majority mark. The BJP, with its allies, reached 30 and secured the support of a Congress MLA to form the government. Subsequently, eight Congress MLAs extended informal support to the BJP while continuing to sit in the Opposition benches—avoiding resignation and thereby sidestepping the anti-defection law.

4. Arunachal Pradesh
After forming the government in 2014, Congress Chief Minister Pema Khandu defected in 2016 along with 43 MLAs to the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA), then aligned with the BJP. Within months, 33 PPA MLAs joined the BJP. Two more Congress MLAs later defected, reducing the Congress tally from 47 to just one within a year.

5. Maharashtra
In the 2019 Assembly elections, the BJP emerged as the largest party with 105 seats, followed by the Shiv Sena (56), NCP (54) and Congress (44). With a majority mark of 145, the BJP and Shiv Sena were expected to form the government but fell out. As a non-BJP alliance seemed imminent, President’s Rule was imposed. In a controversial early-morning move on November 23, 2019, the Union government revoked President’s Rule under Rule 12 of the Transaction of Business Rules, enabling a brief BJP-led government supported by Ajit Pawar.

That government lasted just 80 hours before collapsing. A new coalition of the Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress then took power. In June 2022, however, Eknath Shinde led a rebellion with two-thirds of Shiv Sena MLAs, withdrew support from the Uddhav Thackeray government, and formed a new government with the BJP, with Devendra Fadnavis as deputy chief minister.

6.If Madhya Pradesh showed how governments fall, Goa showed how oppositions vanish. In 2019, a large bloc of Congress MLAs defected en masse to the BJP. In 2022, it happened again. These were not isolated crossovers but bulk migrations, executed within the letter of the anti-defection law but hollowing out the opposition in substance

TCM MP Derek O Brian says that these episodes underline the urgent need to revisit and strengthen the anti-defection law. The repeated subversion of electoral mandates raises serious questions about the health of India’s representative democracy, he adds.

The “washing machine” charge and the role of agencies

Perhaps the most politically charged dimension of this phenomenon is the intersection of defections with investigations. Opposition parties, particularly the Congress, have popularised the term “washing machine”—a shorthand allegation that leaders facing probes by agencies like the Enforcement Directorate or the Central Bureau of Investigation see their legal troubles recede after joining the BJP.

Tapas Roy is a long-time TMC MLA who Roy faced raids by the Enforcement Directorate before quitting the party in 2024 and joining the BJP. Opposition figures have claimed that the investigation lost momentum after his switch. Similar thing happened with former TMC leader Suvendu Adhikari, another high-profile defector accused in corruption-related cases linked to chit fund and sting operations. Once he joined the BJP the investigation isnt visible anymore.

Analytical accounts of the 2024 election cycle note that investigations disproportionately targeted opposition leaders, while cases involving some who later aligned with the BJP appeared to lose traction.  The BJP has consistently rejected these allegations, maintaining that investigative agencies function independently. But politically, the perception has stuck—and become a mobilising narrative for the opposition.

Defections have not been limited to Congress. Leaders from the Trinamool Congress, Telugu Desam Party and Biju Janata Dal and almost every regional party have crossed over or aligned tactically.

The cumulative effect has been a profound restructuring of Indian politics. Power has steadily centralised, with the Bharatiya Janata Party emerging not just as the dominant electoral force but also as the principal absorber of political capital across parties. This has, in turn, weakened the opposition, most notably the Indian National Congress. Perhaps most significantly, defections themselves have been normalised.