Wanted: Anti-horse trading cell in political parties

Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar claimed Congress candidates in Telangana were approached after the exit poll results came out. (Photo: PTI)

In the run-up to the elections to the vidhan sabhas of five states, the Indian National Congress (INC) issued strict directions to its party’s candidates: If you win, ditch your phones and head straight for the party’s headquarters at the state capital.

The routes were thrashed out, alternate routes marked, drivers’ credentials checked and trusted observers assigned to each vehicle. If required, the candidates could also resort to deploying decoy cars.

This exercise is aimed at dissuading ‘horse trading’—a practice where a political party poaches winning candidates of another party to attain majority in the legislative house.

The days between election results and the floor test of the government are nail-biting moments for the public which has cast its vote and is waiting for a government to assume office. Congress leader and Karnataka deputy CM, DK Shivakumar offered to host winning Congress candidates from all five poll-bound states during that period at an undisclosed location (read: luxury resort) in his state. Candidates from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan welcomed the situation because the alternative was surviving the freezing temperatures in Himachal Pradesh, the other Congress-ruled state.

Shivakumar knows well the pains of losing MLAs to horse trading. In 2018, Shivakumar should have been celebrating with the 77 other MLAs of the INC after their win in the general elections. Instead, they bickered for most of that day at the party’s state headquarters. In the evening, Shivakumar herded them into two buses and boarded the second one after everyone else. The buses were not allowed to stop for any breaks on the way to a resort in Bidadi, about an hour’s drive from Bengaluru. Mobile phones, it is said, were allowed after much bargaining.

INC needed to hold on to the 78 MLAs to form government in a coalition with the Janata Dal-Secular’s (JD-S). They stayed put till swearing-in. Nevertheless, the state’s governor called upon BJP’s B.S. Yediyurappa, the single-largest party, to form the government but his government failed the test. The INC-JD(S) coalition assumed power but fell after a year because some MLAs switched to the BJP and several INC and JD(S) MLAs resigned. The BJP was back in business.

In the run-up to the elections and the impending results, the INC may have well taken these measures to protect itself after an undercurrent that it was likely to win in four out of the five Indian states—Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana—that went to polls in November 2023.

The BJP is not the villain in the piece. In fact, they were one of the first parties on the receiving end. In 1982, Devi Lal of the Indian National Lok Dal had holed up with 48 MLAs (of INLD, BJP and independents) of Haryana at a hotel in New Delhi and at his Sirsa (Haryana) farmhouse, guarded by machine gun-toting bodyguards. One of the MLAs in Devi Lal’s ‘custody’ shimmied down a pipe from the third floor of the hotel in New Delhi and the Congress party was able to assume power in the state. Bhajan Lal, who became the chief minister, was dubbed the ‘master horse-trader’ and this was decades before mobile phones and messaging apps.

Just as Shivakumar had sent Congress MLAs to a resort in Bidadi in 2019 to protect them from being poached by the BJP, Chief Minister Ramkrishan Hegde had done the same back in 1983 to stall the Congress from poaching them. ‘Resort arrests’ pretty much became the norm since then, especially in states where the margins were thin.

Candidates contesting elections also have ministerial and other ambitions but the majority cannot be accommodated. There are rarely reshuffles in state cabinets and coteries come into play. Political parties are wary of their MLAs jumping ship to become ministers or lead state public corporations.

In Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath took over as chief minister of the state in 2018, scraping through with support from the Samajwadi Party and the BSP. Disgruntled, Jyotiraditya Scindia resigned, left the INC and joined the BJP along with 22 INC MLAs in early 2020. That broke up Kamal Nath’s government and Shivraj Singh Chauhan returned for a fourth term in office. Scindia was nominated to the Rajya Sabha and became a minister in the Narendra Modi government.

It is no wonder that a lot of the guidelines issued by the INC were keeping Madhya Pradesh in mind. The party converted the third floor of its state headquarters into a control room of sorts for central and state leaders to monitor the situation with guidance from former bureaucrats and retired police officers in the party. Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and Ranjit Surjewala would head the control room.

Shivakumar, who has become this generation's expert on anti-horse trading measures, was sent to Telangana to reign in the winning Congress candidates on results day. He alleged that BRS chief, K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), approached INC candidates with cash offers but did not provide any evidence. INC's Digvijay Singh had levelled similar allegations against the BJP in Madhya Pradesh.

The cash price for horse-trading would be heavy, considering the amount of money required to contest an election, which is much above the Election Commission-capped Rs 40 lakh per candidate for state assembly elections.

A few times in the past, political parties have approached the Supreme Court for succour. But there is little for the top court to do. Horse trading is a scientific process that involves strategic and tactical planning, and top lawyers are consulted before calculated moves are made.