In the eleventh hour they switched tracks and became turncoats. They may look as the woman next door but their hearts don't rule their heads.

Let's talk about the biggest of the season's turncoats, Mala Roy. A known Mamata Banerjee baiter even the other day, Roy had crossed floors from the Congress to Trinamul on the eve of the ruling party's announcement of its candidates for the civic polls.

Mala, a councillor for 20 years, had frequently appeared on TV shows with the resolve to tear apart Mamata and her governance on the Saradha issue. She had complained that Trinamul lacked the courtesy to invite her to programmes in her ward - 88 - despite her being a longstanding councillor.

Mala, her husband Nirbed (a former Trinamul MLA) and Arunava Ghosh, all from the Congress, were the most visible faces lampooning Mamata over the past four years.

But in the 2015 Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections, Mala - who cannot be dubbed a non-performer, especially because of the development work she did in and around the Keoratala crematorium - preferred prospects of success to loyalty.

This, however, is not Mala's first flip-flop. In 1995, she had become a Congress councillor under Mamata's wings. In 2000, she repeated the feat as a Trinamul candidate and went on to become a mayoral council member in the Subrata Mukherjee-led civic board.

In 2005 Mala ditched Trinamul and later became a Congress councillor from the same ward - 88. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, she fought Trinamul's Subrata Bakshi from Calcutta South but was defeated. And now she is back in Trinamul.

But Mala is quick to defend herself. "When I was criticising Trinamul, the context was different. I am back in Trinamul because of a feeling of suffocation while being in the Congress. The Congress humiliated me like anything. I was asked to submit my bio-data in this election despite me being a councillor for so many years,'' Mala said.

According to Kalyan Samanta, a resident of ward 88 that covers large parts of Rashbehari Avenue and Sadananda Road, politics is all about grasping the opportunity that comes through. "Defections in the Congress and Trinamul are commonplace. So what's the big deal in case of Mala Roy?" wondered Samanta, an insurance agent.

In the pack of defectors in south Calcutta, there's another Mala - Mala Mahalanobis -who switched from Trinamul to the BJP after being denied a ticket by the ruling party.

Mahalanobis had contested the 2000 civic polls as a Trinamul candidate from ward 92, inspired by Mamata's "common man politics" and Atal Bihari Vajpayee's "dynamic leadership". In 2010, she was elected by a 5,000-plus margin from ward 93 on a Trinamul ticket. This time, it's the BJP.

In a ward that stretches across Jodhpur Park, Lake Gardens, Bikramgarh and Poddarnagar, very few in the BJP believe her contest against Trinamul's Ratan Dey would be a cakewalk.

"Ratan is a tough customer. He has been attached to this area for a long time. Moreover, the area is known to be a Trinamul stronghold. So it's unlikely that Mala Mahalanobis would win hands down,'' a BJP leader conceded.

Asked why she left Trinamul, Mahalanobis, a retired mathematics teacher at Charuchandra College, said she was fed up with Trinamul's "involvement" in the Saradha scam. "Trinamul is neck deep in the Saradha case and that was affecting my image. So, I decided to join the BJP," Mahalanobis said, refusing to accept she had been denied a Trinamul ticket.

If south Calcutta has apostates, north is not far behind.

Meet Suman Singh, Congress councillor of Cossipore (ward 6) for 20 years. She was unwavering in her loyalty to the Congress but local equations forced her hand. Congress activists in the Tallah and Cossipore areas switched to Trinamul in hordes, leaving Singh isolated. In a ward where 80 per cent of the voters are from a minority community, many of whom have pledged support to Trinamul, the going could have been tough for Singh had she remained in the Congress.

She admits: "Several of our Congress activists have joined Trinamul. So why not me? Moreover, the mayor has given a new shape to the city. I think I'll be able to work much better if a Trinamul board is there," Singh said.

State Congress president Adhir Chowdhury's take on the defectors: "All of them are shameless opportunists."