In LS fray, Congress trumps BJP in betting on turncoats with higher strike rate

Barely a third of the 82 turncoats who contested the Lok Sabha polls as the BJP or Congress nominees managed to win their seats in various states across the country.

The success rate of the turncoats fielded by the BJP saw a significant decline from the 2014 and 2019 polls as 35 of 52 such leaders, who defected from other parties and got the BJP tickets, lost the polls.

According to a research paper by Ashoka University’s Trivedi Centre for Political Data, the turncoats fielded by the BJP registered a success rate of 66.7% and 56.5% in 2014 and 2019 respectively, which dropped to 32.7% this time.

On the other hand, even as 20 of 30 turncoats fielded by the Congress bit the dust in the current polls, 33.3% of them clinched victory – a significant rise from their 5% strike rate in 2014 and 2019.

As many as 25 of the BJP’s 52 turncoat candidates had switched to it from the Congress, 13 of whom lost the polls. In contrast, seven of the 11 BJP leaders who switched to the Congress suffered defeat.

Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Rajasthan saw some key upsets in these polls.

In UP, Neeraj Shekhar, son of ex-Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar, who switched to the BJP from the Samajwadi Party (SP), lost in Ballia to the SP’s Sanatan Pandey by over 40,000 votes.

Other turncoats fielded by the BJP, former Mumbai Congress chief Kripashankar Singh and ex-BSP MP Ritesh Pandey lost from Jaunpur and Ambedkar Nagar respectively. Another ex-BSP MP Danish Ali, who was expelled by Mayawati and had joined the Congress, lost from the Amroha seat on the grand old party’s ticket.

However, former Congress leader close to Rahul Gandhi, Jitin Prasada, who had switched to the BJP after the 2019 polls, won by over 1 lakh votes from Pilibhit, a