The Politics Of Defection

The RSS tries to reconcile the imperatives of Chanakyaniti with its moral reservations over defections

- Uday Mahurkar

Back in 1981, when a BJP municipal councillor defected to the Congress and brought down the party numbers in the Rajkot Municipal Corporation, veteran BJP leader, the late Chiman Shukla, went on a fast that lasted 19 days. So intense was the moral pressure that the councillor left the Congress and went into political exile.

Later, in 1995, when BJP leader Shankarsinh Vaghela and 47 of the 122 Gujarat BJP MLAs threatened to break the party in an act of rebellion against the then chief minister Keshubhai Patel and then state BJP organisation secretary and now prime minister Narendra Modi, it evoked horror within the BJP leadership as well as the rank and file.

In the recent past, however, the saffron party has shed all inhibitions in embracing rebels from other parties. Just last week, 10 MLAs of the Sikkim Democratic Front joined the BJP. Earlier, in September and October 2016, almost the entire Congress legislature leadership in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur had crossed over to the BJP. As a result, the current BJP governments in both states largely comprise those who were originally from the Congress and other parties, including Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu and his Manipur counterpart Biren Singh.

The Northeast’s saffron turn came when disillusioned Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma became rebelin-chief for the BJP on August 29, 2015. Ever since, Sarma, along with BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, has been instrumental in establishing the BJP footprint in the Northeast by using his significant contacts and goodwill to lure legislators from the Congress and other regional parties into joining the BJP.