Resorting to Resorts: Why Hotels Matter for Indian Politics

"Hello, is this the Governor's office?”

“Yes.”

“I have got 113 MLAs [Members of Legislative Assembly] with me. Will you make me the CM [Chief Minister]?”

“Who is this?”

“I am the owner of the hotel where they are hidden."

This joke is doing the rounds through the Indian corner of the internet in connection to the political situation in the state of Karnataka.

Every now and then, an Indian party suddenly packs off some of its members to an expensive resort and tries to cut off communication with them. This is not kidnapping, though it is a partial and deliberate restriction of their freedom. The lawmakers are being hidden in a retreat as part of their party’s fight for a majority. To fight, the party needs to protect its MLAs from themselves – as their loyalty may be compromised by lucrative offers from the other side.

Most often, this happens just after elections when it is unclear if a majority government can be formed. The party or the alliance laying claim to a majority often promptly sends its lawmakers to a high-end hotel and keeps them guarded to make sure they will not be corrupted or blackmailed by rivals. Thus, a party often keeps its lawmakers in an inaccessible hotel from the time election results are declared until the moment they can be transferred straight to the assembly building to pass the “floor test” and prove their majority. This process has been dubbed “resort politics.”

The most recent case is that of Karnataka, a state in southern India. The state-level election took place on May 13. The results were revealed two days later. As it turned out, the biggest party (the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which rules India’s central government) fell just a few seats short of a majority. The parties with the next two highest results – the Indian National Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) – did not obtain enough seats to stand up a majority individually, but could do so together. They promptly announced their will to do so in coalition. At the same time, both parties claimed that their lawmakers may be bought by the BJP.

Their next moves looked like a hasty withdrawal. A day after the election results were declared, buses were brought to the parties’ headquarters to take the newly elected lawmakers to expensive hotels near and just outside Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. Soon after, however, the politicians were transferred to the more distant Hyderabad in the middle of the night (tea, blankets, and breaks were provided – so the media claims). One also reads more speculative and unverifiable stories, such as that two lawmakers “disappeared” on the way to Bengaluru or that the owner of a different hotel declined to accept the politicians after being pressured by the rival party.

It is little wonder that B.S. Yeddyurappa, the leader of the BJP – who would have become the chief minister if his party had just a few more elected representatives – accused the other two parties of herding their own representatives and keeping “them away even from their own families.” Yeddyurappa took the oath as chief minister without proving a majority on May 17 – a day after the rival parties bused their lawmakers to the hotels. On May 19, however, he was supposed to pass the floor test and when it became evident that he did not have the numbers, he resigned. The governor then invited the other two parties to form the government and, as the threat subsided, it turned out that the volatile politicians were back in hotels in Bengaluru.

Other reasons for putting a party’s own lawmakers in a hotel are similar. For instance, a government may need to go through a vote of confidence or may be suddenly shaken midterm by a betrayal or a split in the party, whereupon a new floor test is required. In another recent case, some of the Indian National Congress lawmakers in the state of Gujarat were to decide whom to nominate for the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Indian central parliament). They were put in a hotel outside the state so that nobody could “influence” their decision.

All of this is as saddening as it is amusing. Such precautions prove that when the stakes are highest, a party cannot trust even its own members. In March 2017, the chief minister of Goa was so proud that his government was formed with a safe majority that he publicly declared that none of the lawmakers were kept in a hotel before the swearing-in.

A high-end hotel is big enough for a political party to have a good party. It seems a decent place to lock away assembly members: it is spacious enough, luxurious enough, and it can be kept out-of-bounds easier than many other buildings. Large resorts are complexes in their own, sometimes with walls and usually with security. Moreover, the hotel can be booked entirely to make sure the lawmakers will meet as few “strangers” as possible (which was what happened recently in Tamil Nadu when a ruling party split into factions and both were claiming to have a majority). Finally, taking over a hotel and keeping it locked makes it possible to keep away the press. The hotel is also often located in a different state.

Nevertheless, all of those arrangements may not be enough. An anecdote from 1982 – the veracity of which I cannot verify, however – claims that when the members of the Indian National Lok Dal, a party from Haryana, were being hidden in a hotel in Delhi, one party member used a water pipe as an escape route.

Indian parties usually make no secret that they are hiding lawmakers in order to keep them away from corrupting offers. In a few cases, however, politicians claim that they are simply relaxing after a busy campaign period (as recently happened in Manipur). Usually the name of a hotel in which the lawmakers are being kept is disclosed but sometimes even this is kept secret (which makes even more sense). I have not found any instances of those resorts using such a short political adventure in their later advertising. However, when the Karnataka drama unfolded, the tourism department of the state of Kerala (just south of Karnataka) was quick to sense an opportunity. Soon after the results of the Karnataka assembly polls were revealed, the Twitter handle of Kerala Tourism made a veiled reference to “resort politics” by inviting the Karnataka assembly members to “unwind” in Kerala’s hotels.

All of this only proves that when the New Delhi government chose “Incredible India” as the name of its international tourism promotion campaign, it made the right choice on more than one level.