Saffron offshoots: Leaders who quit BJP to start their own parties
The resignation of the party’s former Tamil Nadu chief K. Annamalai, who completed his seven-year journey with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was officially accepted by party chief Nitin Nabin on Friday, June 5, 2026. While efforts to keep him in the saffron folds have failed, the IPS-turned-politician is set to launch his own regional party. His exit was long awaited ever since he agitated the BJP to split with the AIADMK and contest the Lok Sabha polls on its own in 2024.
“No one can put a gun to someone’s head and force a person to stay in the party. If I want I will stay, if I don’t want I will resign and continue farming,” Mr Annamalai had said in November last year, as the BJP was reigniting alliance talks with the AIADMK, seven months after Mr Annamalai was replaced by Nainar Nagendran as the BJP Tamil Nadu president.
The last high-profile exodus from the BJP took place in November last year, when former Union Minister RK Singh was suspended after he criticized the BJP’s selection of candidates for the Bihar State elections, pointing out criminal backgrounds and corruption. Mr Singh, who was suspended for six years, has since left the party and vowed to form a Bihar-focused party that will consist of ‘honest, educated and caste-neutral’ individuals.
Over the years, many high-profile leaders have left the BJP to form their own parties. A deeper look at their journey shows that most of them either disbanded and rejoined the party or merged their outfits with the BJP. A few jumped to other parties.
From Jana Sangh to BJP
The birth of the BJP is due to the split of the Janata Party in 1980. The party’s constituents – Jana Sangh, Congress (O), Socialist Party and Bharatiya Lok Dal (BLD) went their separate ways after intense polling in 1980. Refusing to make changes to the Jana Sangh’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Jana Sangh was reshaped as a party. On April 6, 1980, Atal Bihari Vajpayee became the first president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Shankersinh Vaghela (1996)
After the BJP successfully won Gujarat from the Congress in 1995, senior BJP leader Shankersinh Vaghela rebelled against Keshubhai Patel, the BJP’s CM pick. With many MLAs supporting Mr. Vaghela as CM, Mr. Patel was replaced as CM by Mr. Suresh Mehta in October 1995. But the rift in the BJP continued and Mr. Vaghela rebelled once again in September 1996, flying 105 of his 121 BJP MLAs to a resort in Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho. The Suresh Mehta government was soon dismissed and President’s Rule was introduced in Gujarat.
Mr. Vaghela, who won 47 MLAs from the BJP, formed his own party, the Rashtriya Janata Party, which had the support of the Congress. He was sworn in as the twelfth CM of Gujarat but remained in office for only one year. Choosing not to contest the 1998 Gujarat state elections, he immediately merged his team with the Congress after the BJP came back to power. After spending almost a decade with the Congress, Mr. Vaghela rebelled and cross-voted against Congress veteran Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha polls in 2017. He later left the party and formed a new party called Jan Vikalp Morcha, but it was not recognized as an official political party by the Election Commission.
After a brief stint in the Nationalist Congress Party, he formed another outfit, Praja Shakti Democratic Party, to contest the 2022 Gujarat elections. However, he later caved in and chose to support the Congress instead.
Kalyan Singh (1999)
Kalyan Singh, who oversaw the demolition of Babri Masjid during his tenure as CM, was seen as the leader of the BJP who would realize the dream of building a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. But after the verdict was suspended in the 1997 Uttar Pradesh elections, Mr Singh had to share power with BSP chief Mayawati, which irritated factions in the BJP. When the BJP-BSP coalition hit choppy waters between 1998 and 1999, Mr. Singh faced internal rebellion from upper-caste BJP MLAs, who forced the BJP Central leadership to replace Mr. Singh with Ram Prakash Gupta as CM.
Angered by his dismissal, Mr. Singh began to vociferously criticize the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He claimed that the BJP had abandoned the issues it represented and had gathered “to the size of the Congress” under Mr Vajpayee’s rule, which led to his expulsion in December 1999. Within a few days, he formed his own ‘Rashtriya Kranti party’ based on Hindutva ideology. His party won four seats in the 2002 elections and was in Opposition with the Samajwadi Party (SP). After the BJP-BSP government fell in 2003, Mr Singh formed an alliance with the SP and his son Rajveer Singh joined the cabinet of his long-time nemesis Mulayam Singh Yadav. He returned to the BJP in 2004 and merged his team with the BJP.
In January 2009, Mr Singh quit the BJP once again, citing ‘humiliation at the hands of party brass’, and the party opposed this, saying Mr Singh’s ‘ideologically opposed’ alliance with the SP was causing trouble. In November 2009, Mr. Yadav blamed the SP’s alliance with Mr. Singh for his loss in the Firozabad Lok Sabha by-elections. Angered, Mr Singh left the alliance, formed another organisation, ‘Jan Kranti Party’, and appointed his son as its president. However, the team was disbanded and merged with the BJP in 2013 as the party stepped up its campaign for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The former UP CM rejoined the saffron party at the massive Modi rally in Lucknow in March 2014 and was subsequently appointed Governor of Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh.
Uma Bharti (2005)
Known as the ‘ardent sanyasin of Khajuraho’, BJP’s stalwart from Madhya Pradesh, Uma Bharti, first expressed her desire to quit the party in 1992 amid infighting in the party’s state unit. While the then BJP chief L K Advani managed to mollify the ‘hero of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement’ to remain in the saffron folds, Ms Bharti resigned from the Lok Sabha and the party post in 2000 after being forced to take a seat in the Union cabinet. Four years later, he ‘quit politics’ once again after he was forced to resign as Madhya Pradesh CM due to a non-bailable arrest warrant issued against him in connection with the 1994 Hubli riots.
He was sacked by Mr Advani in November 2004 when the MP became a vocal critic of CM Babulal Gaur, but was reinstated as general secretary of the BJP a month later on the recommendation of senior officials in the RSS. Despite being brought into the BJP, Ms. Bharti was not reinstated as CM and continued to rail against Mr. Gaur’s successor, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. His antics led to his expulsion from the BJP and the formation of the Bharatiya Janshakti Party (BJSP).
Claiming to have the support of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Ms. Bharti’s team failed to make any political gains as Mr. Chouhan retained the state by winning 143 out of 230 seats in the 2008 state elections. BJSP, on the other hand, won only five seats and Ms. Bharti was warming to rejoining the BJP. After officially returning to the BJP on June 7, 2011, the BJSP merged with the BJP later the same month. He has since expressed regret for leaving the BJP and has held several posts in the Modi cabinet. He is currently one of the deputy chairmen of the party.
Keshubhai Patel (2012)
Former CM Keshubhai Patel, upset with the rising status of his protégé Narendra Modi in Gujarat, left the BJP to form the Gujarat Parivartan party. Mr Patel, who opposed Mr Modi’s bid to run for a fourth term as CM in 2012, had alleged that the BJP was moving away from his principles towards personal aggrandisement. He rejoined the BJP in 2014 when Mr Modi took over the Central leadership after his party failed to open its account in the 2013 State elections. Mr Patel remained with the BJP until his death in 2020 but quit active politics.
BS Yediyurappa (2012)
B S Yediyurappa, the tallest Lingayat leader of the BJP in Karnataka, who was accused by the Lokayukta of illegal transactions with mining companies, was forced to resign as the Chief Minister on July 27, 2011, after pressure from the central leadership of the BJP. Following his resignation, Mr. Yediyurappa left the BJP to form his own party, the Karnataka Janata Paksha (KJP). In the 2013 state polls, KJP defeated the BJP’s Lingayat vote bank, winning six seats and restricting the saffron party to 40.
A thaw emerged between Mr Yediyurappa and the central leadership of the BJP in September 2013, when Mr Modi emerged as the BJP’s choice for Prime Minister. As the BJP ramped up its Lok Sabha campaign, Mr Yediyurappa dissolved the KJP in January 2014 and returned to the saffron party’s fold. He has since been elected CM twice and ascended to the Central Parliament board of the BJP.
Yashwant Sinha (2018)
Vajpayee veteran and former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha first resigned from party posts in June 2009 after the BJP failed to block the re-election of the UPA government. Taking responsibility for polling, he resigned as the BJP’s vice-president and national executive committee member and called on all party workers to resign from their posts so that ‘transparent, internal elections can be held in these posts’. But he remained a BJP worker.
Almost a decade later, Mr. Sinha quit the BJP in 2018 after being sidelined by the Modi-Shah-ruled BJP. Accusing the Modi government of undermining democratic institutions, Mr Sinha vowed to launch a nationwide campaign to “save democracy”.
Ahead of the Bihar elections, Mr. Sinha formed the Bhartiya Sab Log Party (BSLP) along with Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) leader Arun Kumar. The union contested for 30 seats and failed to open its account. BSLP later merged with Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) led by Chirag Paswan [LJP(RV)] In 2022.
Opposing the BJP, Mr. Sinha joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2021, when the saffron party was campaigning for the West Bengal elections. He was jointly elected as the Opposition candidate for the 2022 Presidential elections, but lost to Droupadi Murmu by a margin of 2,96,626 votes. Following the election loss, he left TMC to start ‘Atal Vichar Manch’ ahead of the 2024 Jharkhand elections. The party is not participating in any elections yet.
