Mission Aborted

Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant inducted 28 opposition MLAs into the BJP between 2019 and 2022, the highest by any CM. However, his reputation as a ‘skilled poacher’ took a beating this July when he could convince only five of the 11 Congress MLAs to switch instead of the eight needed to beat the antidefection law. Some say Sawant himself wanted Operation Lotus to fail as he did not want his critics in the BJP to swell. Sometimes you need failure to succeed in politics.