The Aam Aadmi Party lost seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs to BJP after Raghav Chadha and six others quit the party days after a public showdown with senior AAP leaders.
Besides Chadha, the AAP MPs who will merge with the BJP include Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Kumar Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikramjit Singh Sahney, and Swati Maliwal.
Except Maliwal, who is from Delhi, all other MPs who are merging with the BJP are from Punjab. Maliwal had a public fallout with AAP since 2024, but she remained in the party to keep her RS membership.
Interestingly, these Rajya Sabha MPs will not lose their membership in the upper house under the anti-defection law. This is because the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution stipulates that a Rajya Sabha member would be exempt from anti-defection law if two-thirds of the party legislators agree to merge with another party.
AAP had 10 MPs in Rajya Sabha, but the seven MPs who quit the party forms two-thirds of the total strength. Hence, they can merge with BJP without losing their Rajya Sabha membership.
"We, two-thirds of the Members of Parliament belonging to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Rajya Sabha, will exercise the provisions of the Constitution of India and merge with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)," Chadha posted on X.
Who are AAP's remaining Rajya Sabha MPs?
The three remaining AAP MPs in Rajya Sabha are Sanjay Singh, N.D. Gupta, and Balbir Singh Seechewal. Seechewal is AAP's sole MP in Rajya Sabha now.
AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal said the BJP has once again betrayed Punjabis while Sanjay Singh said the defection is a work of the BJP under Operation Lotus. The People of Punjab will not forgive the seven MPs who quit, he added.
After the MPs quit the AAP, the BJP said the party has turned into a "den of corruption". "No one believes in the corrupt AAP. The party, which started by claiming to be a party with a difference, has become a den of corruption," BJP national spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari said.