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With the rise of Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) as the dominant political force in Indian politics since 2014,a plethora of defections from the politically weakening Congress party and other regional parties who joined the BJP at various points of times in the last six years, have continued the trend. After coming to power in 2014, BJP turned its attention on the north east which used to be dominated by Congress and regional parties. In 2015.BJP began with Assam when Congress leader Himanta Biswa Sarma was lured to join the party along with several Congress MLAs. A determined BJP government at the Centre managed to wrest Assam for the party in alliance with regional parties. Later, in Arunachal Pradesh, the BJP formed a government in 2016 through backdoor after engineering the defection of 33 of the 43 MLAs of the People’s Party of Arunachal Pradesh (PPA). In Manipur in 2017, BJP was invited to form the government courtesy of the governor even though the Congress had emerged as the single-largest party with 28 MLAs, and BJP trailed with 21 in the 60-member house. Later this was legalised post-government formation when six Congress MLAs defected to BJP. Interestingly, the Congress even failed to get some of the defectors as the house speaker sat on the petition for over a year. The same thing happened in Goa, where the BJP formed the government even though its tally (13) in the 2017 elections was lower than that of the Congress (17). The destabilisation game or ‘Operation Kamal’ continued when the BJP elbowed the Congress-JDS alliance government in Karnataka and managed to lure 17 Congress MLAs into resigning in 2019 and enabling the BJP to topple the Congress-JD(S) government and forming its own under the leadership of BS Yediyurappa. Even in Madhya Pradesh, BJP dislodged the Congress-led coalition government after Congress leader Jyortiraditya Scindia joined BJP along with 20 Congress MLAs. This was followed by an attempt to destabilise the Congress-led Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan by working on the friction between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot. However Gehlot proved more than a match and after Sachin had “a change of heart”, ‘Operation Kamal’ was temporarily suspended. Even the recent instances of defections in the poll-bound West Bengal from the State’s ruling party Trinamool Congress (TMC) to the BJP is testimony to this fact. This has helped BJP to make steady political inroads in West Bengal. The BJP set its sight even in Puducherry where Congress-led alliance was in power. The house had no BJP MLAs in the 30-member house that includes three nominated. The Centre nominated three members belonging to BJP and set the ball rolling for the destabilisation game. Eventually, six ruling MLAs recently resigned and joined BJP. Puducherry was then placed under president’s rule and subsequently, election announced for April 6. BJP hopes to make its presence in Puducherry and also as backseat driver in Tamil Nadu in alliance with AIADMK. The proliferation of such practices resulted in the enactment of the anti-defection law in India in 1985. Thereafter, the subsequent unfolding of political developments revealed that the anti-defection legislation has largely failed to stall the menace of defections and it continues to take place unabated even today. What is however clear is that the BJP has inched ever closer to its stated goal of a Congress-free India, or even an opposition-mukt India.<\/p>\n
Destabilisation game-changer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}