In less than a week, Raghav Chadha has gone from the Aam Aadmi Party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha to its most publicly attacked sitting MP – stripped of his post, barred from speaking in Parliament over the party’s quota; And he was accused by his own allies of “compromising” and forming an alliance with the Centre’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Two questions now dominate the political conversation: Will Chadha formally switch to the BJP, as AAP leaders have been continuously alleging? And if he does so, or is he ousted, does he retain his Rajya Sabha seat?
There are no simple answers to any of these.
Also, there is the Punjab angle.
Chadha’s turn, in his own words and that of AAP
There was an immediate public display of the results. AAP’s letter to Rajya Sabha Secretariat on April 2Chadha was replaced by his fellow Punjab MP, industrialist Ashok Mittal, as the party’s deputy leader in the Upper House of Parliament.
The party has 10 members in the Rajya Sabha, including seven from Punjab and three from Delhi. It has three MPs in the Lok Sabha, all from Punjab.
It asked the Rajya Sabha Secretariat not to allot speaking time to Raghav Chadha from the AAP quota.
Chadha, 37, replied the same day, but there were more puzzles. dialogues First of all. “Don’t take my silence as my defeat,” he said in a video posted on X. He further said, “I am the river which becomes a flood when the time comes.”
Senior leaders of his party in turn went on the offensive – a style that AAP has known since the founding group including Arvind Kejriwal and Chadha emerged from the anti-corruption movement of 2011-12.
Delhi AAP chief Saurabh Bhardwaj accused Chadha of doing “soft PR” by raising allegedly low issues like airport food prices in Parliament. Expedited-Commerce Delivery TimelinesInstead of facing the BJP-led central government on difficult political grounds.
Bhardwaj said, “Since a small party has very limited time in Parliament, if someone is raising the issue of samosas during that time, it is more important to raise bigger issues of the country.”
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, from where Chadha is an MP, replied directly asking whether Chadha “”tampered with“. He said emphatically: “Yes!”
“If there is a party line on an issue, like in Gujarat where cases have been registered against 160 AAP volunteers, then instead of speaking on them, if someone raises the issue of samosa rates, pizza delivery, wouldn’t you suspect that the person is speaking from some other party, some other station?” comedian-turned-politician Mann said.
Former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi cited specific acts of omission in Chadha’s record. He said Chadha refused to sign the impeachment motion against the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar – an opposition initiative supported by several parties – and did not raise the issue of LPG shortage even when asked by the party amid the US-Iran war. West Asia oil crisis.
“Why are you so afraid of BJP? Why are you afraid to ask questions to PM Modi?” He asked in a video, bluntly saying that when AAP leaders were protesting in police stations across Delhi during Arvind Kejriwal’s nearly six-month imprisonment in 2024, “you were in London because you had an eye operation”.
Later he said, “So many opposition leaders got scared and went to BJP. It is likely that Raghav Chadha will be next.”
Chadha has rejected each allegation separately. On the claim of walkout, he said, “I challenge you to tell me a single example when the opposition has decided to walk out and I have not supported them.” Impeachment Motion: “Signatures of only 50 of the 105 opposition MPs in the Upper House were required. When six or seven AAP MPs did not sign, why am I being singled out?” He did not reveal who the AAP MP was.
He described AAP’s entire attack on him as ‘scripted’.
“Same language, same words, same allegations. This is not a coincidence, but a coordinated attack,” he said on Saturday, quoting a line from the Bollywood film ‘Dhurandhar’ – ‘I am injured, therefore I am dangerous’.
Specifically on his Punjab record, Chadha on Sunday released a video compilation of his intervention in the Rajya Sabha, in which he listed the issues raised by him. These included demands for a legal guarantee of minimum support price for agricultural produce; Attention to groundwater depletion; Demand to give Bharat Ratna to freedom fighter Bhagat Singh; Punjab owed by Centre; and expansion of the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor. During this period he also visited Punjab Devastating floods last year.
He said, “Punjab is not a topic of discussion for me. It is my home, my duty, my soil and my soul.” He called the video a “little trailer”, adding, “Pictures.” still left“To say the least, the real thing will come later.
His Instagram reel on the issue was liked by film star Priyanka Chopra, who is his actress wife Parineeti Chopra’s cousin and top Punjab film star. Sonam BajwaBeyond the political sphere.
Till the evening of 6th April, AAP’s national convenor Arvind Kejriwal has maintained complete silence on this issue.
Delhi-Punjab Fault Line
The roots of tension between Chadha and the AAP leadership go deeper than a few unsigned resolutions or “soft issues” like samosa prices and prepaid recharge validity periods.
Despite being a Punjabi, Chadha is a Delhi boy educated in a modern school; A chartered accountant, he worked at Deloitte and Grant Thornton before joining the Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement in 2011, which eventually became the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
He won his only direct election in 2020 Delhi Assembly election from Rajendra Nagar constituency with more than 57% votes. Two years into his MLA tenure, the party sent him to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab following AAP’s landslide victory in 2022. Chadha was credited with helping engineer victory as co-in-charge of the state for the party.
This promotion caused some resentment in Punjab and he faced allegations of acting as a “Super CM” While being seen as an outsider. The party had also suspended its MLA in 2024, former IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, after he made public allegations against Chadha, among other attacks on the party.
Chadha apparently stepped away from active Punjab AAP affairs and the party broadly during 2023-24 when Kejriwal and his number two leader Manish Sisodia faced corruption charges in Delhi.
He met Kejriwal after his release from jail, which came after six months of imprisonment, but had only a peripheral presence in AAP’s Delhi Assembly campaign for 2025 – the party had lost to the BJP after being in power for a decade.
Since then, Kejriwal and Sisodia have focused intensely on Punjab, where elections due in early 2027 are crucial for the party as it is the only state where it has a government, or a powerful one, outside Delhi.
What has BJP said, what has it not said
BJP’s reaction on this issue is measured. Its Delhi unit president Virendra Sachdeva described AAP’s move to bar Chadha from speaking in Parliament as “highly objectionable”, and even defended his record as an MP. Sachdeva said, “Kejriwal first uses people and then gets rid of them.” He also dedicated an Urdu couplet or couplet to Chadha: “Had very strong relationships, some with weak people“, roughly translating to, “I had very strong relationships with some very weak people.”
Asked whether Chadha would join the BJP, Sachdeva said, “It is up to him to decide his future.”
Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar also used the occasion to target the ruling party in his state, AAP. He said in an interview The Tribune that the Chaddha episode “signaled the beginning of the end of you”. He made no such offer to Chadha, although it remains to be seen whether Chadha is thinking of taking any political action at the state level in Punjab, where he is already facing allegations of being a “Dilli-wala” or an “outsider” from outside his party and now from within too.
The BJP’s door is apparently open, but no one from inside has extended a hand yet – at least not publicly.
But the Aam Aadmi Party has pointed to Chadha’s social media cleansing as a mega hint of his next step. According to the screenshot shared by Delhi AAP chief Bhardwaj, all posts criticizing Modi and BJP have reportedly been removed from his X account.
Parliament seat currently safe
Whatever be Chadha’s political intentions, his constitutional position is currently safe. His Rajya Sabha tenure is till 2028 and AAP cannot easily remove him from Parliament. She can remove him from the internal posts of her party, which she has already done.
Below Tenth Schedule of the ConstitutionWhich covers the anti-defection law introduced by the 52nd Amendment in 1985, a Rajya Sabha member can lose his seat only in two circumstances: by voluntarily giving up party membership, or by disobeying the party whip on a vote in the House.
Over the years courts have held that “voluntarily quitting membership” does not necessarily have to be a formal resignation. It can also be inferred from conduct, such as attending rallies of a rival party, campaigning for another party, or making public statements that lead to continued alienation from the party.
There is a precedent from 2017, in which two Rajya Sabha MPs from Bihar-based BJP ally JD(U), Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar, were disqualified by the Rajya Sabha Speaker after their participation in rallies organized by opposition parties was cited by the JD(U) as evidence of their defection.
But the threshold for such interpretation is high, and the ultimate power is largely discretionary.
The decision on any disqualification petition rests with the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, a post currently held by the Vice President of India CP Radhakrishnan. The Constitution does not specify any time limit for a decision, even if a party makes a case under the anti-defection law.
The Supreme Court had said in 2023 that the cases should be resolved within three months. But the law has not been amended to set any such deadline.
A comparable example to Chadha’s example exists from AAP itself. Its Rajya Sabha MP is Swati Maliwal Made serious allegations against Kejriwal and his private secretary publicly and the matter reached the court; Yet she remains a member today, and continues to publicly attack the AAP leadership.
