Lok Sabha Elections 2024: 10 high-profile Congress turncoats and their last electoral performance

Gourav Vallabh, the popular TV face of the Congress party, joined the (BJP) on April 4, hours after quitting the grand old party calling it ‘directionless’ and criticising it for the ‘anti-Sanatan’ slogans and ‘abuse’ of wealth creators.

Vallabh is not the only, and certainly not the last, of the Congress leaders who have jumped ship and joined the BJP before

In fact, at least three dozen leaders, including sitting members of parliament from different parties, have joined the ruling party in recent months. This assumes significance considering the 370-seat target set by the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra for the party and 400-plus seats for the (NDA) in the 2024 elections.  

The newly inducted BJP leaders include at least 16 from the Congress, eight from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, two each from the (AAP) and the YSR Congress and one each from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), and the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC).

Here is a list of the top 10 high-profile Congress leaders who jumped ship to the BJP and how they performed in the last election they fought. Most of these candidates had lost in their previous contests on Congress tickets.  

The Congress party’s popular TV face formally joined the BJP on April 4, hours after quitting the grand old party. Vallabh contested the 2023 Rajasthan Assembly elections on a Congress ticket. He lost the Udaipur seat to BJP candidate by over 32,000 votes. Earlier in 2019, Vallabh contested the Jharkhand Assembly elections as a Congress candidate. He finished third in the Jamshedpur East seat.

Celebrity boxer Vijender Singh joined this year. Singh was a Congress candidate from South Delhi in the