NEW DELHI: Political leaders often switch parties before major polls in a bid to remain on the winning side, but that strategy does not appear to have worked in this Lok Sabha election as most turncoats failed to make it to Parliament, Election Commission data showed Friday.
Over 75 candidates had switched sides before the election, hoping to push their chance to become Members of Parliament, but at least 47 of them lost.
Actor-politician Shatrughan Sinha, who joined Congress in April, lost by over 2.84 lakh votes to BJP's Ravi Shankar Prasad from the Patna Sahib constituency in Bihar.
Former JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, who contested on RJD ticket from Madhepura, lost to Dinesh Chandra Yadav of his former party by over 3 lakh votes.
Tariq Anwar, who switched from Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party to Congress, lost by over 57,000 votes from Katihar. Cricketer-turned-politician Kirti Azad lost Dhanbad, Jharkhand, by over 4.8 lakh votes.
He had joined the Congress after quitting the BJP. Son of former Union minister and veteran BJP leader Jaswant Singh, Manvendra contested on Congress ticket from the border district of Barmer in Rajasthan and lost by 3.23 lakh votes from Kailash Choudhary of his previous party.
Baijayant Panda, a former BJD leader who contested this election as a BJP candidate, lost from Kendrapara in Odisha by over 1.52 lakh votes.
Former Union minister Panabaka Lakshmi who switched to TDP from Congress lost from Tirupati in Tamil Nadu by 2.28 lakh votes. Some turncoats, however, managed to win the general election.
Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan Shukla, who had contested on Congress ticket in the last general election but joined the BJP in 2017, won from Gorakhpur seat with a margin of over 3 lakh votes.
The seat was last represented in Parliament by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Kunwar Danish Ali, who won the Amroha seat as a BSP candidate, had switched from the JD(S).
Ali won this seat by a margin of 63,248 votes. In Karnataka, three political leaders changed affiliations from Congress to BJP, and two of them won the electoral battle.
Umesh Yadav defeated senior Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in Gulbarga while Y Devendrappa won Bellary.
But from Hassan, A Manju lost by over 1.41 lakh votes from Prajwal Revanna, grandson of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda.
In Maharashtra, Sujay Vikhe Patil, son of senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, had switched to BJP from Congress. He won with 2.81 lakh votes in Ahmednagar constituency of Maharashtra.
Suresh Dhanorkar, who joined Congress leaving Shiv Sena, defeated former Union minister of state for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir by over 44,000 votes from Chandrapur.
In Nanded, Pratap Chikhalikar, a turncoat, defeated state Congress chief and former chief minister Ashok Chavan by about 40,000 votes.
Other major turncoat candidates who lost are AAP candidate Dharamvir Gandhi from Patiala in Punjab, Congress candidate Naseemuddin Siddiqui from Bijnor UP, Savitri Bai Phule from Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh and Babu Katara of Congress from Dahod in Gujarat.
In West Bengal, Manas Bhunia, Apurba Sarkar, Kanialal Agarwal, all former Congress MLAs who contested on TMC tickets, lost.
Paresh Adhikary and Mafuja Khatun, former MLAs of Forward Bloc and CPI(M), contested as TMC and BJP candidates, respectively, lost.
Anupam Hazra and Mausam Noor, former MPs of TMC and Congress, fought the polls on BJP and TMC tickets, respectively. They lost from Jadavpur and Malda North Lok Sabha seats, respectively.