By the time Raghav Chadha walked out of the Constitution Club of India in New Delhi on Friday afternoon and reached the BJP office five kilometers away, the arithmetic had changed for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), especially in Punjab, where it rules and elections are due in less than a year.
AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal’s response also mentioned Punjab and not Chadha or six others who had defected to the BJP. Obviously, what happens in Delhi does not stay in Delhi. Of the 10 AAP Rajya Sabha MPs, seven merged with the BJP and six of them are from Punjab. He invoked the constitutional two-thirds merger provision that protects him from disqualification.
Now AAP’s only Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab is Balbir Singh Seechewal – an environmentalist, Padma Shri recipient and grassroots person, known for reviving the 160-km long Kali Bein river.
Seechewal was one of AAP’s 2022 Rajya Sabha nominees after it won with a huge majority in Punjab.
Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak were two of AAP’s main strategists who were rewarded for their election work in Punjab. Both of them and industrialist Ashok Kumar Mittal held a press conference in Delhi on Friday, where they announced major changes. Later all three formally joined BJP.
Others to switch AAP MPs from Punjab are former cricketer Harbhajan Singh, and industrialists Rajinder Gupta and Vikramjit Singh Sahni; Also there is Delhi Swati Maliwal Whose enmity with Aam Aadmi Party is going on since 2024.
what did bhagwant mann say
Chief Minister of Punjab Bhagwant Mann’s response Combative, as it was when Chadha and AAP went public with their slow-moving breakup in early April.
He said, “These six-seven MPs were not from the party. They were not public leaders. None of them is even capable of becoming a village sarpanch.” He called these MPs traitors traitor of punjaband termed the BJP a party of “kadde, vaddey te chhadde” (expelled, divided and left behind) – a play on Punjabi words clearly taking a dig at Chaddha.
Asked why the party chose them, he said they were achievers in their respective fields and the party wanted to bring in good people from different fields. “Despite advances in science and technology, there is no machine that can read minds. Let me know if there is such a machine and can I order from Amazon!” Comedian-turned-politician Mann made this comment at a press conference in Chandigarh.
Kejriwal’s first reaction was a one-line, post on X saying that the BJP has betrayed Punjabis. He did not say anything further on this till 8 pm on Friday night.
Chadha alleged that he had distanced himself from the party because, “I did not want to be a part of their crimes.” He has been MIA in AAP affairs since around 2023 after being accused of being the “Super CM” in Punjab.
“The party is no longer working in the interest of the country or national, but for personal gain,” he said on Friday, indirectly talking only about corruption charges related to the 2023 Delhi Excise (Liquor Sale) Policy case, in which Kejriwal and 22 others were recently acquitted by a trial court. Chadha praised PM Narendra Modi’s “performance record”.
At the induction ceremony at the BJP headquarters, among those present was BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh, who hails from Amritsar, Punjab.
Controversy over Rajya Sabha nomination
AAP had faced criticism when it selected two non-Punjab residents – Chhattisgarh’s Pathak and Delhi-based Chadha – in the first batch for Punjab’s Rajya Sabha seats. Others were from Punjab: Harbhajan Singh, Mittal and another industrialist Sanjeev Arora.
When two more seats became vacant months later, the party chose two Padma Shri winning eminent Punjabis – Seechewal and Vikramjit Singh Sahni. Sahni has also defected now.
The “outsider” argument was also mentioned in a song by late rapper Sidhu Moosewala, who was in the Congress at the time. His song ‘Scapegoat’ has a verse in Punjabi, “Tell me who is responsible for what happened to the Rajya Sabha seats, and tell me who is the traitor now.”
The fall of the Rajya Sabha is the most dramatic one-day shock the AAP has suffered in Punjab or in its entire history. The Lok Sabha numbers were also not encouraging; In 2024, the main opposition party Congress won seven of the 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab. AAP won three seats.
The BJP remained completely blank, while the SAD won one seat, while two seats went to independent candidates associated with radical Sikh groups.
AAP has since been focusing on welfare-scheme delivery, including fulfilling the recent promise of ₹1,100 monthly to almost all the women in the state.
Fragmented opposition, benefit to BJP?
The BJP, which has just two MLAs in the 117-member House, is entering the contest with trademark aggression. It has never achieved power in Punjab on its own, and in its best years it was the junior partner of the SAD.
Yet, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced at a Moga rally in March that the party would contest elections completely on its own in 2027, formally ending any possibility of a revival of the SAD-BJP alliance. He said, “You have given a chance to all political parties. Now give us also a chance.”
BJP, contesting alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, secured around 19% of Punjab’s votes but did not win any seats. Its leaders have said that Aadhaar can be expanded keeping in line with Assam, Tripura and Uttarakhand.
But they are states without the demography of Punjab, its Sikh majority and the recent history of agitation, which ended the SAD-BJP alliance in 2020 and forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi to walk back three farm laws. The party’s presence in rural areas is limited.
It is building its Punjab roster by including various political parties.
Recently in April, HS Phulka – the human rights lawyer who won the Dhaka seat for AAP in 2017 and remained the leader of the opposition, walked out saying he wanted to focus solely on his fight for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots – formally joined the BJP.
But the state election is not an AAP-versus-BJP story, as it was in the case of Chadha’s defection.
The 2027 contest is shaping up to be a multi-cornered fight with AAP, Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal hoping for a region-specific narrative; And the BJP is ultimately hoping to make it on its own.
The Congress has so far had some infighting issues with state unit chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warringah, opposition leader Pratap Singh Bajwa and former CM Charanjit Singh Channi all holding big reputations. The Sukhbir Singh Badal-led SAD is in a state of long-term rebuilding.
According to political analyst and history professor Harjeshwar Pal Singh, however, the changes by Chadha and others have “made a mockery of the people’s judgment”.
“The party (BJP) which has two members in the Assembly now has six members in the Rajya Sabha from Punjab,” he underlined. He further said, “The shamelessness of the BJP is visible to all. Every strategy has been used, including through central agencies.” Ashok Mittal, who was recently made AAP’s deputy Rajya Sabha leader replacing Chadha, faced ED raids earlier this month.
CM Mann clearly said that the MPs who have changed sides are not grassroots leaders.
However, the major opposition parties have got a stick to beat AAP with, and they have not spared the BJP either.
Punjab Congress chief Waring said, “AAP has no ideology. It was natural. These MPs have no relevance in Punjab. AAP should be alert – 50 of their MLAs may join the BJP next! Only now the MPs have left the party.”
Shiromani Akali Dal’s Daljit Singh Cheema described the defection as evidence of a “systemic failure of trust, internal democracy and ideological cohesion” and demanded that both Kejriwal and Mann resign as AAP chief and chief minister respectively. “Punjab cannot be made a laboratory for political experiments,” he said.
As far as the growing tension between Chadha and AAP in Punjab is concerned, Bhagwant Mann’s AAP-led state government has recently withdrawn his Z-plus security. The very next day the Center restored his security.
Accused of raising only “soft issues” like mobile recharge legality, Raghav Chadha has defended his Punjab record by sharing a compilation of his parliamentary speeches on issues like agricultural produce prices, groundwater depletion, honoring freedom fighter Bhagat Singh and the state’s financial dues from the Centre.
As a voter, He had cast his vote in the last Lok Sabha elections in Anandpur Sahib, Punjab.
