“Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram”: the phrase that named defection politics

Haryana held its first state elections in February 1967, and the Congress won a majority under Chief Minister Bhagwat Dayal Sharma. It didn't last: the Assembly Speaker, Rao Birender Singh, is widely reported to have orchestrated a wave of defections that toppled Sharma within weeks, and Singh himself was sworn in as Chief Minister in March 1967 at the head of a coalition.

The defections kept coming. An MLA named Gaya Lal changed his political affiliation three times within about a fortnight in 1967 — from Congress, to a United Front grouping, back to Congress, and back again — as rival camps outbid each other for his support.

As the story is usually told, after one of these switches Rao Birender Singh presented Gaya Lal to the press and declared, “Gaya Ram is now Aaya Ram” — playing on the two words for “gone” and “come.” The line stuck. “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram” became, and remains, the standard shorthand across Indian politics for a legislator who trades sides for office — and the episode is regularly cited as the case that eventually pushed Parliament toward the 1985 Anti-Defection Law.