Had the BJP not toppled eight elected state governments in eight years of Modi rule with five others in the pipeline, one could have ignored the claims, but the matter has become too serious to ignore now. Apart from the four states mentioned by KCR, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren has now alleged the BJP has hatched a conspiracy to topple his elected government. KCR, the TRS chief has even appealed to the PM Modi to put a stop to the heinous acts of toppling governments.

Even since Narendra Modi has come to power in 2014, he and his party have given a slogan to ‘Congress free India’. Not only that they have worked on it and toppled their six state governments by dirty tricks so far, including threatening MLAs of launching prosecution against them through central agencies like Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation, National Investigating Agency, and the Department of Income Tax, and to suffer dire consequences if they don’t defect from opposition in favour of the BJP.

The modus operandi of the BJP is simple – let people elect the BJP, and if the don’t elect, topple the opposition led governments that they elect and grab the power. It certainly amounts to subvert the democracy when a party that wins the election is not allowed to rule by dirty tricks. In such cases, the very essence of democracy withers away.

Thus, the Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao seems to be right when he accused the BJP of vitiating political space in the country and called upon the judiciary and rational society to act in order to safeguard democracy in the country. Yesterday evening, on November 3, KCR even played video clips of interactions of the two seers and a middleman allegedly sent by the BJP leadership to Hyderabad to “buy” four TRS MLAs with an offer of Rs500-1000 million each.

“They (the agents from Delhi) were shamelessly describing how they did such things in Karnataka and Maharashtra, and now the process is on for Telangana, Andhra, Rajasthan, and Delhi,” KCR said. The Cyberabad police had arrested the four agents and collected evidence of their plan by deploying secret audio, video recorders. In one of the clips, it was hinted that 38 MLAs of Telangana are on ED Radar.

BJP’s focus is to bring down elected governments since 2014, said Jairam Ramesh of the Congress, when the Maharashtra government led by Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray was toppled few months back in June, and the defected leader Eknath Shinde took oath as Chief Minister with the BJP in the new government. He said that the offices of governors, speakers, central agencies like the ED and CBI are openly being misused by the BJP for this purpose.

"Through the naked display of money and muscle power, the BJP has undemocratically and unethically captured yet another state government. Under the Modi-Shah duo, the BJP wants to capture power at any cost, either directly or through remote control. What happened in Maharashtra is shameful for Indian democracy," he had said. “BJP can go to any extent to win election – from misuse of money power to polarisation and violence. Despite using all these tactics, if the voters reject them, then they start hatching conspiracies to topple elected governments.”

BJP brought down Congress government in Uttarakhand in 2016 by engineering defection and bringing the party in minority. The same year in Arunachal Pradesh, 43 out of 44 MLAs were made to defect to BJP-backed Front – People’s Party of Arunachal.

In the 2017 Manipur election, Congress won 28 out of 60 seats to become the largest political party in the Vidhan Sabha and the BJP had only 21 seats, but the Congress was not even given chance by the Governor to prove its majority.

A similar modus operandi was carried out in Bihar in 2017, when the BJP unethically toppled the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ government. Congress-JD(S) coalition government was toppled in Karnataka in 2019.

In 2020, a political conspiracy was hatched in Madhya Pradesh where the Congress led elected government was toppled. It was dramatic collapse of the 15-month-old Congress government led by the chief minister Kamal Nath. A new government was formed by BJP as Shivraj Singh Chouhan as chief minister. A similar operation was conducted in Puducherry in 2021, just before the assembly elections. BJP toppled the Congress led government in the state.

In case of Goa, as in Manipur, Congress emerged as the single largest party by winning 17 out of 40 seats but BJP managed to form government after breaking the Congress legislature party. BJP had won only 13 seats. In Sikkim, BJP did not will a single seat and even lost deposits in the 2019 assembly election, but now it has 12 MLAs in the Vidhan Sabha. They got all of them defected from Sikkim Democratic Front.

There are other cases too in which the BJP tried to form government in an unethical manner through money power, alleged Jairam Ramesh, “First in November 2019 in Maharashtra, where Devendra Fadnavis took oath along with 10 defected NCP MLAs at midnight, but then had to step down unceremoniously. Second in Rajasthan, where the BJP tried to mislead 19 Congress MLAs, but their machinations failed” in bringing down Congress government.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal while accusing BJP of spending 6,300 crore on toppling elected state governments of opposition political parties called the BJP a “serial killer of state governments”. There is a curious case of Delhi government. When Kejriwal led AAP government could not be broken by defection, Modi led Union Government has changed the definition of the state “government” through a legislation in 2021. Government is Delhi thus means Lieutenant Governor appointed by the Centre, not the Chief Minister elected by the people. Central agencies set to hound the AAP leaders for defection, Kejriwal alleges, an on of the state minister alleged that he was asked by the investigating officers to defect from AAP in favour of BJP. Four AAP MLAs have said that they were offered Rs 20 crore each by the BJP leaders for defection. Kejriwal has said in the assembly that BJP has bought 277 MLAs in the country to topple oppositions led governments in the last eight years.

Winning election is thus not enough in India for political parties in opposition. They may be prevented from forming their government by BJP’s intrigues, intimidation, bribes, defections, or numerous dirty tricks. Even if they form government they could be toppled by BJP through subverting democracy.