We are not here to merely catalog a historical timeline or chart the chronological milestones of defection in India. Rather, our focus is to dissect the real institutional crisis driving this phenomenon. We must ask a fundamental question: why do seasoned politicians, who have stood steadfastly with a party and its core ideology for decades, suddenly choose to defect at a later stage in their careers? The answer goes beyond mere opportunism.
The political map of India has been completely redrawn following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) historic landslide in the West Bengal Assembly elections. By securing a massive 207-seat majority in the 294-member house, the BJP achieved what was once deemed politically impossible: breaching the eastern fortress and defeating TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee in her own traditional stronghold of Bhabanipur.
This decisive capture of Bengal pushes the footprint of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to an unprecedented 22 states across the country, stretching the ruling alliance’s governance literally from Gangotri to Gangasagar and effectively shrinking the opposition’s presence to a few regional pockets.
However, the true weight of this electoral shift became visible immediately after the last ballot was counted. Beyond a mere electoral defeat, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) plunged into an absolute structural collapse. A massive, non-stop exodus has taken over the shattered opposition camp, with dozens of local municipal councillors, several key MLAs, and a staggering two-thirds of its Lok Sabha MPs breaking away simultaneously to align themselves with the BJP-led NDA.
In a choreographed bid to bypass local anti-defection traps, this departing faction sought a strategic merger with the Nationalist Citizens Party of India, a registered but little-known outfit from Tripura with no historical national presence.
While this spectacular collapse illustrates the extreme end of political vulnerability, it uncovers a deeper, systemic reality driving modern Indian governance. Ideological rigidities are rapidly diminishing, giving way to a pragmatism centered on political survival. Dissenting legislators face a stark dilemma if they remain in the shrinking space of the opposition—confronting public anger, institutional isolation, or intense scrutiny from central agencies.
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Conversely, shifting alignment toward a dominant ruling party offers immediate security, legislative longevity, and programmatic rewards. This revolving door is not an isolated event; it is the structural launchpad for an era where power-sharing equations are being rewritten from the ground up.
While this dramatic collapse of a regional powerhouse illustrates the end of political vulnerability, the phenomenon of floor-crossing is deeply embedded in the subcontinent’s legislative history. The roots of this political maneuvering stretch back to 1967, when a single MLA in Haryana changed parties thrice within a single day, permanently branding Indian politics with the infamous “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” lexicon.
However, we are not here to merely catalog a historical timeline or chart the chronological milestones of defection in India. Rather, our focus is to dissect the real institutional crisis driving this phenomenon. We must ask a fundamental question: why do seasoned politicians, who have stood steadfastly with a party and its core ideology for decades, suddenly choose to defect at a later stage in their careers? The answer goes beyond mere opportunism; it lies in deep structural pathologies.
For instance, factionalism and leadership bias within the Congress led to its prominent regional leaders leaving the party and joining the BJP. This can be seen when Himanta Biswa Sarma left the Congress and joined the BJP on August 23, 2015, citing the Congress leadership’s refusal to name him as the next chief ministerial candidate in Assam.
Similarly, in Madhya Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia’s resignation from the Congress in March 2020 pulled 22 loyalist MLAs with him, toppling the 15-month-old Kamal Nath government on the grounds of the old guard blocking his political rise. Both actions resulted in a surge in the political stature of these regional leaders into national headlines, where one was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Assam and the other earned a ministerial berth in the Union Cabinet.
Beyond individual career ceilings, a more systemic crisis occurs when the core ideology of a dynastic party begins to decay, as witnessed during the June 2022 fracture of the Shiv Sena. Disagreements over power-sharing post the 2019 Maharashtra State Assembly elections broke the old political equations between the BJP and the Shiv Sena, leading to an alternate coalition with the Congress and the NCP.
This alliance snowballed into internal resistance on the grounds of prioritizing power-sharing over the party ideology originally formulated by founder Bal Thackeray. This resulted in a split of the party into two camps: one led by Uddhav Thackeray (Shiv Sena UBT) and a rebel faction led by Eknath Shinde with the support of 40 rebel MLAs.
This time, the defection did not form a new party; rather, competing claims were asserted over who was the real heir to founder Bal Thackeray’s party and ideology.
These claims were challenged in Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary, Governor of Maharashtra (2023). A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, led by then Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, directed the Maharashtra Assembly Speaker to first determine which of the factions constituted the “real political party” in the Shiv Sena dispute. This was to be done by examining the party constitution and rules specifying the leadership structure, rather than merely legislative strength, before taking a call on disqualification proceedings against rival MLAs under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution.
While the Constitution under the Tenth Schedule explicitly mentions certain defenses that members may invoke to shield themselves from disqualification—such as the two-thirds merger clause under Paragraph 4, or if the political party condones the action within 15 days under Paragraph 2—loopholes persist.
While provisions related to splits existed before 2003, Paragraph 3—which allowed a split in a party if a minimum of one-third of its legislators broke away—protected it from facing disqualification. This provision, however, was removed by the 91st Amendment to the Constitution, which came into effect on January 1, 2004.
The court emphasized that following the deletion of Paragraph 3, “a split is no longer a defense” under the Tenth Schedule. It further held that members of multiple factions may continue in the House only if the requirements of Paragraph 4 relating to a merger are satisfied. While the case was not strictly about a merger, as the Shinde faction claimed itself to be the “real Shiv Sena,” the Constitution Bench noted that the Speaker must not decide which faction constitutes the political party based on a “blind appreciation” of which group held a majority in the Assembly.
“This is not a game of numbers, but of something more. The structure of leadership outside the Legislative Assembly is a consideration which is relevant to the determination of this issue,” the court emphasized. The Assembly Speaker declared the Shinde faction as the “real Shiv Sena” in January 2024, a decision that remains under challenge. News of further defections from the Shiv Sena (UBT), with another two-thirds of its Lok Sabha MPs merging with the Shinde faction, continues to worsen the structural stability of dynasty-driven political parties.
The most surprising defection was observed in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), when seven of its MPs in the Rajya Sabha (representing a two-thirds majority) joined and merged with the BJP, reducing AAP’s Rajya Sabha strength from ten to three from the state of Punjab. The issues cited for this breakaway included central high-handedness, a lack of intra-party democracy, and an inability of the central leadership to address local grievances.
This trend has been visible since the party’s inception in 2015, as it has continuously struggled to keep its flock together, losing prominent figures such as Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Kumar Vishwas, Ashutosh, Kapil Mishra, and subsequently affecting leadership dynamics with figures like Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak.
What these cases share is structure, not only ideology. Three pathologies drive the phenomenon. First, the Dynastic Party High Command is driven by a normative assumption that party membership carries a moral obligation to obey the commands of its leader’s heirs or the old guard, regardless of the actual electoral utility. Second, the systematic exploitation of the Tenth Schedule’s loopholes—including the merger clause, engineered delays in Speaker adjudication, and choreographed technical splits—has hollowed out the law from within.
Finally, the near-total collapse of intra-party democracy closes off every legitimate channel for dissent, leaving defection as the only structural exit available to a legislator who disagrees with party leadership. To stabilize India’s legislative ecosystems, policy architects must systematically target and dismantle each of these institutional failures.
The resolution of these structural pathologies requires a synchronized legal overhaul that reimagines political parties not as private clubs, but as public institutions subject to constitutional discipline. To dismantle the pathology of dynastic high commands and the “Old Guard vs. New Vanguard” dilemma, amendments to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, must implement a strict set of organizational mandates. First, party registration and state funding must be made strictly conditional upon holding regular, independent, secret-ballot internal elections for all executive bodies.
Second, formal or informal age limits must be established for executive or ministerial posts to naturally transition older leaders into advisory councils or Margdarshak Mandals, a practice that has been effectively seen in the BJP’s party functioning. Third, a strict “One Person, One Post” rule must restrict individuals from simultaneously holding organizational leadership positions and legislative or executive offices. This framework effectively doubles the available high-status roles within the party ecosystem, ensuring a predictable, top-tier vacancy rate that younger leaders can aspire to fill.
Simultaneously, the pathology of Tenth Schedule exploitation can be cured only by stripping the inherently partisan office of the Speaker of its adjudicatory power. This power must be shifted entirely to an independent, permanent judicial tribunal or the Election Commission of India, bound by a strict, statutory 45-day window for final disposal. This decisive shift was explicitly recommended by the Law Commission’s 170th Report in 1999, a position the Dinesh Goswami Committee had reached nearly a decade earlier in 1990, and one that the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution reaffirmed in 2002.
Furthermore, to completely neutralize opportunistic party-shifting, the legislative “merger” loophole must be repealed entirely. It must be replaced with a total re-election mandate, forcing any dissenting group—regardless of its size—to immediately surrender its seats and validate its split through a fresh democratic mandate from the electorate.
Finally, the pathology of suffocated intra-party democracy must be relieved by legally narrowing the scope of the anti-defection whip. The law should restrict its binding penalty exclusively to No-Confidence Motions and Money Bills that threaten the immediate survival of a government. Liberating lawmakers to vote their conscience or constituency interests on general legislation effectively lowers the internal pressure valve.
This allows constructive dissent to thrive internally, ensuring that defection is no longer the sole survival mechanism available to an ambitious legislator, and effectively brings an end to the five-decades-old revolving-door practice of “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram.”
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About the author
Kunal Ralhan is a practicing Advocate in the Supreme Court with interest in the matters related to Law, Policy, Politics, and Environmental Matters.
