Introduction
On 24 April, 2026, seven Rajya Sabha —Upper House of the Indian Parliament— members of the Aam Admi Party (AAP) announced their defection from the party to ‘merge’ with ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.[1] With their defection, the party was left with only two representatives in the Upper House while it has no presence in Lok Sabha, i.e., the Lower House. Later in June 2026, around 64 of 80 freshly-elected state assembly members from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal broke away with their party to claim a separate bloc. To add to this crisis, 20 of the TMC MPs also parted ways with Mamata Banerjee’s party and merged with little-known National Citizen Party of India (NCPI).[2] The wave then turned to Maharashtra, where it took on the opposition Shiv Sena (Udhav Bal Thackeray) party. With two-third of its members having decided to shift their allegiance to Eknath Shinde faction, parliamentary presence of the UBT group nosedived from nine to three.[3]
