Election Results 2024: Most candidates who jumped parties to BJP and Congress, lost elections

The BJP had fielded eight turncoats in Telangana — the most in a State by a party — and of them 2 won

Prime Minister Narendra Modi being felicitated during the public meeting in for the Lok Sabha Polls, in Ambala. Former Haryana Chief Minister and party candidate from Karnal, Manohar Lal Khattar, party candidate from Kurukshetra, Naveen Jindal are also present. | Photo Credit: ANI

Of the 76 turncoats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections tracked by The Hindu Data Team, only 20 won the polls. A turncoat is an MP candidate in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, who faced their previous election as a candidate of another recognised State/national party. The previous election they faced can be for an MLA seat or for an MP seat. For our analysis, we only considered candidates who fought on a Congress or a BJP ticket in 2024.

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The BJP had fielded eight turncoats in Telangana — the most in a State by a party — and of them 2 won. The Congress had fielded four turncoats in Punjab, of them 2 won. The story takes a look at the party-wise and State-wise win percentages of such turncoat candidates.

Table 1 | The table shows the total number of turncoats tracked and the number of turncoats who won in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

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Of the 33 turncoats we tracked in the Congress, 7 won the elections. Of the 43 turncoats from the BJP we tracked, 13 won.

Table 2 | The table lists the party-wise number of turncoats who won/lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

In Uttar Pradesh, we tracked 10 turncoats. Of them, three won in the 2024 polls. We also tracked 7 turncoats from Punjab, of them two won.

Table 3 | The table lists the party/State-wise number of turncoats who won/lost the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

Some of the notable turncoats include BJP candidate Jagadish Shettar, who won from the Belgaum seat in 2024. He competed the previous election on behalf of the Congress and before that was part of the BJP.

BJP candidate Naveen Jindal, who competed and won from the Kurukshetra seat in 2024, was a congress candidate in the same seat in 2014.

Geetha Shivarajkumar, the Congress candidate from Shimoga lost the election. She had competed on a JD(S) ticket in the 2014 elections from the same seat.

Table 4 | The table lists the turncoats who were candidates in the 2024 Lak Sabha election and whether they won or lost