{"id":2251,"date":"2026-09-27T08:32:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T08:32:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/27\/111-mps-mlas-party-switches-2022-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T08:32:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T08:32:36","slug":"111-mps-mlas-party-switches-2022-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/2026\/09\/27\/111-mps-mlas-party-switches-2022-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"111 Sitting MPs and MLAs Changed Parties 2022\u201126, BJP Gains 26%"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- Quick Adsense WordPress Plugin: http:\/\/quickadsense.com\/ -->\n<div class=\"9fece8afa224fd09e54b043d0febfb58\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- NR ATF -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8898941184964366\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"4839033563\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n<p>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 \u2013 26 percent of the total \u2013 joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), making it the second\u2011largest recipient of party\u2011switchers after the Naga People\u2019s Front (NPF).<\/p>\n<h2>Scale and geographic spread of the switches<\/h2>\n<p>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).<\/p>\n<p>Not all 111 cases were simple defections. The analysis also counted instances where parties merged, where lawmakers resigned and later contested by\u2011elections under a different banner, and where members were disqualified but later returned to the legislature on another party\u2019s ticket. ADR cautioned that the list might not be exhaustive because official election\u2011commission data are not uniformly maintained or readily accessible.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<h2>Who moved to the BJP?<\/h2>\n<p>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\u202fMaliwal, Ashok\u202fMittal, Harbhajan\u202fSingh, Raghav\u202fChadha, Sandeep\u202fKumar\u202fPathak, Vikramjit\u202fSingh\u202fSahney and Rajinder\u202fGupta.<\/p>\n<p>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\u202fKumar\u202fPandey from Uttar Pradesh, Congress MLA Nirmala\u202fSapre from Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka MLA G\u202fJanardhan\u202fReddy, whose regional party Kalyana\u202fRajya\u202fPragathi\u202fPaksha merged with the BJP.<\/p>\n<p>Four Gujarat Congress legislators \u2013 CJ\u202fChavda, Arjun\u202fModhwadia, Arvind\u202fLadani and Chirag\u202fPatel \u2013 resigned, joined the BJP and subsequently contested by\u2011elections under the new banner, according to the ADR dataset.<\/p>\n<h2>NPF leads the tally, but through a merger<\/h2>\n<p>The Naga People\u2019s Front emerged as the top destination, absorbing 32 legislators \u2013 29 percent of the total. Unlike the BJP\u2019s gains, the NPF\u2019s increase stemmed from a merger in October\u202f2025. Lawmakers originally elected on Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP) tickets transferred to the NPF after the two parties combined.<\/p>\n<p>At the time of the merger, the NDPP, led by Chief Minister Neiphiu\u202fRio, held 32 seats in the 60\u2011member 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.<\/p>\n<p>Because the NPF\u2019s rise was driven by a party\u2011level merger rather than individual defections, it is counted separately from the BJP\u2019s intake of legislators who personally switched allegiance.<\/p>\n<h2>Other parties and the broader pattern<\/h2>\n<p>Following the NPF and BJP, the Nationalist Citizens Party of India (NCPI) attracted 20 lawmakers \u2013 18 percent of the total \u2013 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\u2011known NCPI on June\u202f14, while pledging support to the BJP\u2011led National Democratic Alliance in the lower house.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The Indian National Congress received nine defections, Shiv Sena eight, the National People\u2019s Party six and the People\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<h2>ADR\u2019s reform recommendations<\/h2>\n<p>Using the findings as a springboard, ADR renewed its call for tightening India\u2019s anti\u2011defection 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cpolitics of convenience and self\u2011gain\u201d versus a \u201cpolitics of conviction, courage and consensus.\u201d The organization, founded by IIM\u202fAhmedabad 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.<\/p>\n<p>Whether parties and legislatures will adopt ADR\u2019s recommendations remains uncertain, especially given that governments of various political stripes have themselves benefited from legislators changing sides.<\/p>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new ADR analysis finds 111 elected legislators switched parties between 2022 and 2026, with the BJP attracting 29, or 26%, of the moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[299],"tags":[2434,405,2435,1716,2433],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-adr-report","tag-bjp","tag-defection-law","tag-indian-politics","tag-party-switching","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsraise.com\/in\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}