When the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister Swami Prasad Maurya decided to jump ship and join hands with the Samajwadi Party (SP), political pundits had dubbed the move as a game changer and a major shot in the arm for the SP.
The perception was bolstered by the fact that the party's most senior Other Backward Class (OBC) face Maurya was moving out of the BJP with his coterie of over half a dozen loyalists. Some experts had claimed that Maurya was the 'Ram Vilas Paswan' of Uttar Pradesh who manages to get a sense of which way the wind is blowing.
All speculations and analysis were put to rest after the SP, despite having done better than 2017, fell way short of the magic figure paving way for a historic win by the BJP, which came to power for a second consecutive term, bucking a trend of nearly four decades.
However, another outcome that could not miss anyone's attention was the performance of turncoats who were expected to deliver but failed.
Here, we analyse the performance of five such prominent turncoats: