The immediate consequences are clear. The defections are an embarrassment for the Congress which finds itself unable to defend its stables in the state for the second time in three years, despite having made each lawmaker take a public oath not to desert the party ahead of the assembly elections earlier this year. The party has blamed the BJP’s political and financial muscle and accused the ruling party of using federal agencies as tools of intimidation, but its continued vulnerability will lower its stock at a time of intense jostling in the national Opposition space.

But beyond party politics, the defections also point to a curious trend in Goa’s electoral landscape. In the last term of the assembly, nearly two-thirds of the lawmakers switched sides – an unprecedented number in Indian politics. The continued spate of defections indicates that there is no major electoral penalty to defections in the state; voters tend to not judge lawmakers harshly for abandoning ideologies or party folds; and that local fiefs and spheres of influence hold more importance in the state’s politics. This kind of a transactional relationship between voters and their representatives is a challenge to not only the anti-defection law (which premises itself on prioritising the party over the lawmaker) but also electoral politics itself.