170 Congress MLAs joined BJP, other parties to contest polls between 2016 and 2020

News Network

March 11, 2021

New Delhi: As many as 170 MLAs left the Congress to join other parties, especially BJP, during the elections held between 2016-2020 while only 18 BJP legislators switched parties to contest the polls in this period, according to a report by poll rights group Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).

The ADR, in a new report, said between 2016-2020, 182 of the 405 re-contesting MLAs, who switched political parties, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), followed by 38 who joined the Congress and 25 who joined the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Five Lok Sabha MPs left the BJP to join other parties during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls while seven Rajya Sabha MPs left the Congress to join another party to contest elections between 2016-2020, the report said.

As many as 170 MLAs left the Congress to join other parties during the elections held between 2016-2020, while only 18 MLAs left the BJP to join another party to contest polls in this period, it added.

"It is to be noted that the recent fall of governments in Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh and Karnataka State Assemblies were due to defections of their MLAs," the report said.

It said between 2016-20, 10 of the 16 re-contesting Rajya Sabha MPs who switched political parties joined the BJP and five of the 12 Lok Sabha MPs who changed parties joined the Congress during the 2019 parliamentary polls.

For the report, the National Election Watch and the ADR have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of 433 MPs and MLAs, who changed parties and re-contested elections held in the last five years.

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Trump’s associates told to avoid racist language making them ‘look like Nazis’

News Network

November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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