TL;DR

India's opposition parties, particularly the Congress, are bleeding leaders to the BJP at an alarming rate. From Himanta Biswa Sarma in 2015 to Bhupen Borah in 2026, the pattern repeats: sidelined leaders, frustrated ambitions, and a ruling party that knows exactly when to open its doors. But does this strategy actually work at the ballot box? The data tells a surprising story.

The Bhupen Borah Switch: Assam's Latest Defection

On February 16, 2026, Bhupen Kumar Borah resigned from the Indian National Congress after 32 years with the party. He served as Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) president from 2021 to 2025. By February 22, he is expected to formally join the BJP.

The reasons sound familiar to anyone following Indian politics. Borah alleged that his successor Gaurav Gogoi "humiliated" him during alliance-building talks, that he was repeatedly sidelined, and that even Rahul Gandhi failed to address his concerns.

Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma wasted no time. He visited Borah's residence, where he was welcomed with an aarti by Borah's wife and son. After a 90-minute meeting, Sarma announced that Borah would join the BJP, calling him "the last recognised Hindu leader in Congress" and describing the switch as a "homecoming."

The Congress high command scrambled. Rahul Gandhi called Borah directly. AICC in-charge Jitendra Singh said Borah had "withdrawn" his resignation. But Borah kept his options open, and the writing was on the wall.

The irony? Sarma himself pulled the exact same move in 2015, leaving the Congress after feeling sidelined by then-CM Tarun Gogoi, who had begun promoting his son Gaurav Gogoi instead. Now Gaurav Gogoi, as Assam Congress chief, is watching history repeat itself.

The Defection Assembly Line: A Timeline

This is not an isolated incident. The BJP has systematically absorbed opposition leaders over the past decade. Here are the most consequential switches:

Year	Leader	From	What Happened Next
2015	Himanta Biswa Sarma	Congress	Became Assam CM in 2021
2019	17 Karnataka MLAs	Congress/JDS	Toppled coalition government
2020	Jyotiraditya Scindia + 22 MLAs	Congress	Toppled Madhya Pradesh government; Scindia now Union Minister
2022	Sunil Jakhar	Congress	Former Punjab Congress President
2022	8 Goa Congress MLAs	Congress	BJP consolidated power without elections
2024	Ashok Chavan	Congress	Former Maharashtra CM; 55 corporators followed
2024	Ravneet Singh Bittu	Congress	Made Union Minister despite losing election
2024	Anil Antony	Congress	Son of veteran leader A.K. Antony; lost in Kerala
2024	Padmaja Venugopal	Congress	Daughter of former Kerala CM K. Karunakaran
2024	Arvinder Singh Lovely	Congress	Delhi Congress President resigned and joined BJP
2026	Bhupen Borah	Congress	Expected to join BJP on Feb 22

Between 2014 and 2021, 222 candidates left Congress to join other parties, the maximum from any single party, according to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). Of all party-switchers in this period, 35% joined the BJP.

Why They Leave: The Three Triggers

1. Frustrated Ambition

This is the most common reason. The Congress party has a structural problem: too many leaders, too few positions, and a decision-making process concentrated in the high command.

Scindia was widely expected to become Madhya Pradesh CM but was passed over for Kamal Nath. Jitin Prasada felt "ignored" despite years in Rahul Gandhi's inner circle. Bhupen Borah spent 32 years building the party in Assam, only to be replaced by Gaurav Gogoi and then publicly sidelined.

The pattern is consistent: leaders who run campaigns, build ground-level networks, and deliver results get passed over for someone with more proximity to the leadership.

2. The Investigative Agency Factor

Opposition parties allege that central investigative agencies have become tools for engineering defections. The Wire reported that at least 23 prominent opposition politicians who crossed over to the BJP saw cases against them go quiet after they switched.

The Enforcement Directorate's activity has seen a steep 95% rise since 2014. Himanta Biswa Sarma himself faced CBI questioning in the Saradha scam before his switch. After joining the BJP, the probe went dormant.

The BJP denies any connection between defections and eased investigations, calling it coincidence. But the sheer volume of cases makes the pattern hard to ignore.

3. Survival Instinct Before Elections

With assembly elections approaching, politicians calculate odds. In Assam, where the BJP won 75 of 126 seats in 2021, joining the ruling party looks like a safer bet than fighting with a weakened Congress. Borah was directly offered a "secure seat" by Sarma. For a two-time MLA whose constituency has shifted rightward, the math is straightforward.

Operation Lotus: The Playbook

What the opposition calls "Operation Lotus" and the BJP calls "natural political realignment" has been deployed across states with remarkable consistency.

The template, first tested in Karnataka in 2008, goes like this: identify disgruntled leaders, offer them cabinet berths or organizational positions, and engineer enough resignations to bring down a government or cripple the opposition before elections.

It worked in Madhya Pradesh in 2020, where Scindia's exit triggered a cascade of 22 Congress MLA resignations, toppling the Kamal Nath government. It worked in Goa in 2022, where eight Congress MLAs defected en masse. It worked in Arunachal Pradesh, where Congress went from 47 seats to just one in under two years without a single election being held.

In the Northeast alone, nearly 93 MLAs defected to the BJP over eight years.

Congress leader Akhilesh Prasad Singh has already accused the BJP of launching Operation Lotus in Assam ahead of the upcoming assembly elections, with Borah's defection as the opening move.

The Anti-Defection Law: A Paper Tiger

India's anti-defection law, enshrined in the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution since 1985, was supposed to prevent exactly this.

The law's biggest loophole: if two-thirds of a legislative party's members defect together, it counts as a "merger" and no one gets disqualified. This is precisely how Eknath Shinde's faction of 40 Shiv Sena MLAs avoided disqualification in Maharashtra.

Other problems, as identified by PRS Legislative Research:

The Speaker, who decides disqualification cases, is typically a ruling party nominee and rarely acts against the government's interests
There is no fixed timeline for decisions, allowing cases to drag on for years
The law applies to all votes in the House, not just confidence motions, effectively killing internal dissent
Leaders simply resign instead of crossing the floor, sidestepping the law entirely

As JURIST noted, the law needs urgent reform to prevent further erosion of democratic institutions. But with the ruling party being the primary beneficiary of defections, there is little political will for change.

Does the Strategy Actually Work?

Here is where the data gets interesting.

In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP fielded 110 candidates who had defected from other parties during the Modi era. 69 of them lost. That is a failure rate of 63%.

Metric	Number
BJP defector candidates in 2024 LS polls	110
Who lost	69 (63%)
Congress legislators who left party (2014-2021)	222
All party-switchers who joined BJP (2014-2021)	35%
Leaders facing probes who got reprieve after joining BJP	23 of 25

Notable losses include Ravneet Singh Bittu (Ludhiana), Preneet Kaur (Patiala), Ashok Tanwar (Sirsa), Anil Antony (Pathanamthitta), and Jyoti Mirdha (Nagaur).

In Karnataka, Operation Lotus directly contributed to the BJP's seat count dropping from 104 to 66 in the 2023 assembly elections. Long-time BJP workers resented the fact that 10 out of 16 cabinet berths in the Yediyurappa government went to turncoats instead of loyalists.

The takeaway: defections help the BJP weaken the opposition and sometimes topple governments, but they do not consistently translate into votes. Voters, it turns out, do not always reward party-hoppers.

What This Means for Indian Democracy

The defection epidemic has real consequences beyond party politics.

For voters: When your elected representative switches parties after winning on a different ticket, your vote is effectively nullified. You chose a candidate representing certain policies and alliances. A post-election switch renders that choice meaningless.

For the opposition: A functional democracy needs a strong opposition. Systematic defection hollows out parties that should be holding the government accountable. When Congress in Arunachal Pradesh goes from 47 seats to one without a single election, the democratic process has been bypassed.

For the BJP itself: Over-reliance on defectors creates internal resentment. When loyalists who built the party from scratch see turncoats get plum positions, it corrodes organizational morale. The Karnataka backlash in 2023 is a cautionary tale.

For governance: Defectors are typically rewarded with ministerial positions or organizational roles. This means team composition is driven by political horse-trading rather than competence.

The Bottom Line

Bhupen Borah's defection is not the disease. It is a symptom. The disease is a political system where the ruling party has unprecedented tools of attraction and the principal opposition party has a structural inability to retain talent.

Until the Congress fixes its internal power distribution, and until the anti-defection law gets real teeth, the Great Defection will continue. The only real check so far has come from voters themselves. The 63% loss rate for defector candidates in 2024 suggests that electoral consequences may do what the law cannot.

The question for Bhupen Borah, and for every leader considering the jump: is the guaranteed short-term reward worth the long-term electoral gamble?

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The Great Defection: Why Opposition Leaders Keep Joining the BJP