The issue of political defections typically takes centre-stage at a particular moment in the life of a polity. This is the intervening period of transition when an old system of political dominance gives way to a new one.
In Maharashtra, the era of Congress dominance, which had weakened by the 1990s, sputtered to an end in 2014. Yet, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not been quite able to take over the reins from the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine, given the attitude of the local elites in regions such as western Maharashtra, leading to a chaotic decade of attrition. Whether the dramatic switch of the Ajit Pawar NCP faction to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) signals the birth pangs of a new era of the BJP’s dominance, or is merely a contingent truce, remains to be seen.
