Between 2022 and 2026, a total of 111 sitting members of parliament and state legislatures altered the party under which they were elected, according to a detailed study released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch. Of those, 29 lawmakers – 26 percent of the total – joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), making it the second‑largest recipient of party‑switchers after the Naga People’s Front (NPF).
Scale and geographic spread of the switches
The ADR report, published on September 24, covers 26 Lok Sabha members, seven Rajya Sabha members and 78 state legislators. The switches were recorded across 17 states and Union Territories. Nagaland recorded the highest number of defections, with 32 legislators moving to new parties, followed by West Bengal (20), Telangana (nine) and both Goa and Punjab (eight each).
Not all 111 cases were simple defections. The analysis also counted instances where parties merged, where lawmakers resigned and later contested by‑elections under a different banner, and where members were disqualified but later returned to the legislature on another party’s ticket. ADR cautioned that the list might not be exhaustive because official election‑commission data are not uniformly maintained or readily accessible.
In terms of percentages, the study found that 26 of the 543 Lok Sabha members covered (about 5 percent) changed parties, seven of the 233 Rajya Sabha members (roughly 3 percent) did the same, and 78 of the 4,100 state legislators (around 2 percent) were included in the tally.
Who moved to the BJP?
Among the 29 legislators who joined the BJP, seven were Rajya Sabha members, all originally elected on an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ticket. Their names are Swati Maliwal, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Kumar Pathak, Vikramjit Singh Sahney and Rajinder Gupta.
The remaining 22 were state legislators. Eight were Congress MLAs from Goa, four were Congress MLAs from Gujarat and two were Congress MLAs from Himachal Pradesh. Five JD(U) MLAs from Manipur also shifted to the BJP. Additional entrants included Samajwadi Party MLA Manoj Kumar Pandey from Uttar Pradesh, Congress MLA Nirmala Sapre from Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka MLA G Janardhan Reddy, whose regional party Kalyana Rajya Pragathi Paksha merged with the BJP.
Four Gujarat Congress legislators – CJ Chavda, Arjun Modhwadia, Arvind Ladani and Chirag Patel – resigned, joined the BJP and subsequently contested by‑elections under the new banner, according to the ADR dataset.
NPF leads the tally, but through a merger
The Naga People’s Front emerged as the top destination, absorbing 32 legislators – 29 percent of the total. Unlike the BJP’s gains, the NPF’s increase stemmed from a merger in October 2025. Lawmakers originally elected on Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) tickets transferred to the NPF after the two parties combined.
At the time of the merger, the NDPP, led by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio, held 32 seats in the 60‑member Nagaland Assembly, while the NPF had only two. The NDPP and the BJP together formed the state government, holding 12 seats. Rio, who founded the NDPP in 2017, said the consolidation was intended to create a single strong regional force capable of representing Naga aspirations and addressing longstanding political issues.
Because the NPF’s rise was driven by a party‑level merger rather than individual defections, it is counted separately from the BJP’s intake of legislators who personally switched allegiance.
Other parties and the broader pattern
Following the NPF and BJP, the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) attracted 20 lawmakers – 18 percent of the total – all of whom were Lok Sabha MPs formerly with the Trinamool Congress (TMC). After the TMC lost the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election, the 20 MPs announced a merger with the little‑known NCPI on June 14, while pledging support to the BJP‑led National Democratic Alliance in the lower house.
The NCPI had previously made its electoral debut in the 2023 Tripura Assembly election without winning any seats, making its sudden influx of former TMC MPs a notable development.
The Indian National Congress received nine defections, Shiv Sena eight, the National People’s Party six and the People’s Party of Arunachal four. The three parties that contributed the most legislators to the overall count were the NDPP (25), the TMC (20) and the Congress (19), together accounting for 64 of the 111 cases, or 58 percent.
ADR’s reform recommendations
Using the findings as a springboard, ADR renewed its call for tightening India’s anti‑defection laws. The group proposed amending the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution so that disqualification decisions for MPs would be made by the President and for MLAs by the state governor, both acting on the advice of the Election Commission, rather than by the presiding officer of the respective houses.
Additional suggestions included barring defectors from holding public office for a specified period and setting fixed timelines for adjudicating disqualification petitions. ADR framed the issue as a clash between “politics of convenience and self‑gain” versus a “politics of conviction, courage and consensus.” The organization, founded by IIM Ahmedabad professors in 1999, is known for its legal challenges that led the Supreme Court to require candidates to disclose criminal records, financial assets and educational qualifications.
Whether parties and legislatures will adopt ADR’s recommendations remains uncertain, especially given that governments of various political stripes have themselves benefited from legislators changing sides.
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