Field day for Aya Rams, Gaya Rams

The Aya Ram, Gaya Rams are having a field day ever since the Election Commission of India announced the schedule for the General Elections 2024.

No day passes without some politician breaking ranks with his colleagues and attributing this to ‘suffocation within the ranks of his/her former party’ and ‘feeling liberated’.

Of course, the major gainer this season is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) what with party managers having been tasked with carrying the party number beyond 400.

There has been hardly an election without floor crossing since 1967 when the ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ phenomenon reared its head in Haryana promising a windfall for those not particularly enamoured of political morality.

It did not take long for them to return to the party they had started with. Thin veneer of ‘Ghar Wapasi’ came handy to explain their shenanigans.

And what better way to claim moral rectitude. After all, as the Hindi saying goes, ‘subah ka bhoola shaam ko ghar ajaye to use bhoola nahin kehte’.

A very liberal translation would have us believe that ‘one who realises his folly, is like one who did not commit it’. But there is an essential difference this time.

The defectors could have been forgiven if they were playing the simple game of opportunism.

Party leaders are convinced that it is ‘hijacking’ of leaders of opposition to realise the grandiose designs of ‘opposition-mukt’ Bharat. One academic’s research terms the turncoats as ‘political hostages’ or ‘ED-Harried Defectors’.

No wonder then the saffron party is way ahead of others put together in shopping for the recruits from shores unexplored heretofore.

A rough reckoning estimates 30 per cent of the saffron party nominees this time are defectors.

No wonder then ‘the party with a difference’ is only in the race to taking it to a level no one can even dream of.