Number Theory: Turncoats and their role in Indian politics, polls

A majority of turncoats in both the BJP and the Congress come from parties smaller than both of them.

That the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has no problems in inducting leaders from opposition parties, even though it accuses these parties of misgovernance and corruption, has become a common refrain in Indian politics since 2014. How true is such criticism? One way to answer this question is to try and see whether turncoats — candidates who jump parties between elections — are a post-2014 phenomenon in Indian politics? To be sure, such an analysis has its limitations as it cannot account for change in alliances or factor in the role of important leaders who switch parties but do not contest elections. With these caveats in place, the data shows that turncoats have always existed in politics and the dominant party of the day has always used them to help its electoral prospects.

For representational purposes only. (Sonu Mehta/ HT Photo)

Turncoats and their role in Indian politics, polls

• 
  How many turncoats are the BJP and the Congress fielding in this election?

  To answer this question, HT tracked turncoats among BJP and Congress candidates (announced up to May 3) by searching for them in election results from the Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD) database (more on this later) and in news reports. This shows that 135 (30.8%) of BJP’s 438 candidates are turncoats, of which 100 joined the party after 2014. The Congress has a lower (but not insignificant) proportion of turncoats among its candidates. 62 of its 327 candidates are turncoats, 55 of which joined the party after 2014. This data also shows that turncoats flow both from BJP to Congress and from Congress to BJP. 43 of BJP’s turncoats were Congress members earlier, the biggest source of turncoats for the party. Similarly, the biggest source of turncoats for the Congress is the BJP, with 22 coming from the party. The numbers also show that a majority of turncoats in both the BJP and the Congress come from parties smaller than both of them. Has 2024 seen a rise in the BJP and Congress fielding turncoats? HT has used the TCPD database to answer this question.
• A note on historical data and its limitations

  The TCPD database defines candidates switching parties in successive elections (including by-elections) as turncoats. This is far from a complete definition of turncoats and suffers from errors of both wrong exclusion and inclusion. Firstly, this means that a candidate who moved from one party to another before the 2014 elections will not show as a turncoat in 2024, because the database only looks for them between two elections. Similarly, a leader who has changed parties but does not contest elections (he might still influence them) will not show as one. On the other hand, it tends to overcount turncoats because of things such as mergers or splits in existing parties. For example, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, shows up as a turncoat in the database in the 1977, 1980, and 1991 Lok Sabha elections because he contested elections on a Bharatiya Jan Sangh, Bharatiya Lok Dal, Janata Party and BJP tickets. Then there are inconsistencies which could be a result of candidates being spelt or named differently in different elections. HT did not correct these mistakes, which would require long-term work with manual oversight to be comprehensive. However, minor inconsistencies that could be easily identified using computer programs were fixed. Having said this, the TCPD database is the only way to answer this question on the basis of data.
• 
  BJP fielded fewer turncoats than the Congress in 2019, but it was ahead of the Congress in 2014

  According to the TCPD database, the BJP fielded 23 turncoats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections while Congress fielded 40 of them. These numbers were 33 and 19 for the BJP and the Congress in the 2014 elections. A comparison of turncoats fielded by the BJP and Congress in all elections since 1984 (the first election which the BJP contested) shows that the Congress fielded more turncoats than the BJP in seven out of the ten Lok Sabha elections which have taken place since. Of course, these numbers need to be read with the caveats listed above. The 1984 number of turncoats for the BJP is high because of the technicality of many of them showing as Janata Party candidates in 1980 elections when the BJP had not been formed.
• 
  Do turncoats do better than other candidates?

  Their fortunes are tied to the fortunes of the party they are joining. A turncoat joining the Congress had a much better chance of winning than the average turncoat candidate (except in the post-emergency 1977 election) up to 1984, the last time the Congress won a majority on its own in a Lok Sabha election. When the party’s fortunes declined in the 1990s, the winnability of a turncoat joining the Congress also decreased. Turncoats joining the BJP performed better than the average turncoat candidate in 1990s.
• 
  Majority of turncoats joining the BJP and Congress are from other political parties

  This builds on the data shown above. Most candidates changing parties before elections are basically local political actors trying to exploit political tailwinds to boost their own poll prospects at the constituency level. The data shows this clearly. Of the total 52 and 63 turncoats fielded in 2014 and 2019 elections by the BJP and the Congress, only 25% and 24% joined the BJP from the Congress or vice versa. The rest of them were from regional political parties. This shows that a shrewd local political calculation might be a bigger driver of both overall politics and the turncoat syndrome in Indian elections.