AAP has 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, of which seven are now “merged” with the Centre’s ruling BJP, announced Raghav Chadha
AAP has 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, of which seven are now gone, announced Raghav Chadha. (PTI)
Had Chadha quit the AAP alone, he would have lost his Rajya Sabha membership under the anti-defection law. The general rule is that a legislator is disqualified if (s)he gives up the party membership, or votes against the party whip.
The number 7
But, under the Constitution’s Tenth Schedule, a member of the Rajya Sabha is exempt from anti-defection disqualification if two-thirds of his/her party’s legislators together agree to merge with another party.
AAP has 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, of which seven — meaning ⅔ — are now gone, announced Chadha, flanked by fellow RS MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Kumar Mittal.
He said he had a letter of forming a bloc and merging with the BJP from another four of the AAP’s Rajya Sabha members.
Thus, he listed himself, plus Mittal who had recently been made deputy leader of the AAP in the Upper House of Parliament in Chadha’s place; Sandeep Pathak, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikramjit Singh Sahney, and Swati Maliwal.
The three that remain with the AAP, so far, are Sanjay Singh, Balbir Singh Seechewal, and ND Gupta.
Why could AAP not sack him?
Chadha underlined the constitutional position in his post on X: “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).”
The law also say that if a party sacks an MP, (s)he retains the membership; which is why the AAP did not sack Chadha as he would’ve remained a Rajya Sabha member while being anti-AAP, unless the party could prove his anti-party activities which is along-drawn, subjective issue to be decided by the Rajya Sabha chairperson.
The limbo, thus, could be resolved if Chadha could gather enough numbers. That he did on Friday, April 24.
Big meaning for Punjab
Of these seven who’ve switched sides, six are MPs from Punjab, elected in 2022 after the AAP gained a brute majority in the Vidhan Sabha elections there.
That starkly means the AAP now has just one of its Punjab Rajya Sabha MPs remaining: environmentalist spiritual guru Balbir Singh Seechewal.
This is a major setback for the state’s ruling party as the Punjab assembly elections are barely 10 months away.
All of them have six-year Rajya Sabha terms until April 2028.
Swati Maliwal finally out of AAP
The seventh to quit is Delhi’s Swati Maliwal, who has been publicly at odds with the AAP leadership since 2024 but did not quit as she would’ve lost her membership. The party did not sack her as that would’ve meant she could remain Rajya Sabha member nonetheless.
Maliwal needed a group of ⅔ of the AAP members in the House; that now became possible as Raghav Chadha and others too came together to switch together. Maliwal’s term is until 2030.
Who are the ones who quit, and those who stay
Brief bios of the AAP Rajya Sabha members to have switched to the BJP reveal that many of these are essentially non-politicians or businesspeople.
Raghav Chadha and Swati Maliwal are activists who were part of the AAP’s founding team in 2012 after taking part in the Anna Hazare-frontfaced anti-corruption movement.
Sandeep Pathak remained the party’s national general secretary, and was credited, along with Chadha, for the Punjab win. He was, however, seen as an “outsider” when he was sent to the Rajya Sabha from the state.
Chadha, ethnically a Punjabi but actually a Delhiite, was also seen as someone from outside being rewarded by the party at the cost of local Punjabis.
Former Team India cricketer Harbhajan Singh remains a non-political personality while the party sought to project that a hero from Punjab’s politically important Doaba region — Jalandhar to be precise — was being given respect with a Rajya Sabha seat. He has remained largely aloof, though, on political issues, barring the occasional social-media spat over nationalistic issues.
Man who replaced Chadha also goes
Industrialist Ashok Kumar Mittal, who was named the AAP RS deputy leader in place of Chadha — the public breaking point between Chadha and AAP — has also gone to the saffron party with him. Mittal, founder of Lovely Professional University (LPU) and a sweets and car sales agency empire, was recently raided by central probe agency ED over his sources of income. The party had called the raids a pressure tactic.
Vikramjit Singh Sahney is known as an industrialist and philanthropist, whose base has largely remained Delhi but he is active in social projects in Punjab.
Rajinder Gupta of the Trident Group of Ludhiana is yet another businessman. He was elected in a bye-election to the Rajya Sabha barely six months ago, in October 2025, after another industrialist Sanjeev Arora moved to the state assembly and became a minister in Bhagwant Mann’s regime.
Sandeep Pathak is an IITian-turned-activist-politician like party boss Arvind Kejriwal, and was incharge of Punjab.
Aarish Chhabra is an Associate Editor with The Hindustan Times online team, writing news reports and explanatory articles, besides overseeing coverage for the website. His career spans nearly two decades across India’s most respected newsrooms in print, digital, and broadcast. He has reported, written, and edited across formats — from breaking news and live election coverage, to analytical long-reads and cultural commentary — building a body of work that reflects both editorial rigour and a deep curiosity about the society he writes for. Aarish studied English literature, sociology and history, besides journalism, at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and started his career in that city, eventually moving to Delhi. He is also the author of ‘The Big Small Town: How Life Looks from Chandigarh’, a collection of critical essays originally serialised as a weekly column in The Hindustan Times, examining the culture and politics of a city that is far more than its famous architecture — and, in doing so, holding up a mirror to modern India. In stints at the BBC, The Indian Express, NDTV, and Jagran New Media, he worked across formats and languages; mainly English, also Hindi and Punjabi. He was part of the crack team for the BBC Explainer project replicated across the world by the broadcaster. At Jagran, he developed editorial guides and trained journalists on integrity and content quality. He has also worked at the intersection of journalism and education. At the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, he developed a website that simplified academic research in management. At Bennett University’s Times School of Media in Noida, he taught students the craft of digital journalism: from newsgathering and writing, to social media strategy and video storytelling. Having moved from a small town to a bigger town to a mega city for education and work, his intellectual passions lie at the intersection of society, politics, and popular culture — a perspective that informs both his writing and his view of the world. When not working, he is constantly reading long-form journalism or watching brainrot content, sometimes both at the same time.Read More
