From just 2 MLAs to now six MPs: What Chadha-led rupture in AAP means for BJP in Punjab polls 10 months away

BY the clip Raghav Chadha walked come out of the make-up bludgeon of bharat in New Delhi on Friday afternoon — and into the BJP office five kilometres away — the arithmetic for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had changed particularly in Punjab, where it is ruling and elections are due in less than a year.AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal’s reaction also referenced Punjab, and did not as such Chadha or the six others who switched to the BJP. Clearly, what happens in Delhi does not stay in Delhi. Of the AAP's 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, seven merged with the BJP and six of them are from Punjab. They invoked the constitutional two-thirds merger provision that protects them from disqualification.The sole AAP Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab now is Balbir Singh Seechewal — an environmentalist, Padma Shri recipient and grassroots figure, best known for reviving the 160-km Kali Bein river.Seechewal was one of the AAP's 2022 Rajya Sabha nominations after it won by a landslide in Punjab.Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak were two main AAP strategists rewarded for their election work in Punjab. Those two, plus industrialist Ashok Kumar Mittal, held the press conference in Delhi on Friday where they announced the big switch. These three later formally joined the BJP.Others making the switch from among Punjab AAP MPs are ex-cricketer Harbhajan Singh, and industrialists Rajinder Gupta and Vikramjit Singh Sahney; plus there is Delhi's Swati Maliwal who had a running feud with the AAP since 2024.What Bhagwant Mann saidPunjab CM Bhagwant Mann's response was combative, as it was when Chadha and AAP made their slow-burn breakup public earlier in April.“These six-seven MPs were not the party. They were not mass leaders. None of them is capable of becoming even a village sarpanch," he said. He called these MPs “gaddar” or traitors of Punjab, and branded the BJP a party of "kaddhe, waddhe te chhadde" (the expelled, the divided, and the left-behind) — the Punjabi wordplay jibing Chadha pointedly. As to why party had chosen them, he said they were achievers in their respective fields and the party wanted to bring in good people across fields. “Despite advances in science and technology, there is no machine that can read minds. Tell me if there is such a machine and if I can order one from Amazon!” Mann, a comic-turned-politician, remarked at a press conference in Chandigarh.Kejriwal's first reaction was one line, a post on X saying the BJP had betrayed Punjabis. He did not speak further on it as of 8pm, Friday.Chadha alleged that he had distanced himself from the party as, “I did not want to be a part of their crimes." He has been MIA in AAP affairs ever since around 2023 after he was also accused of being “super CM” in Punjab,“The party is no longer working for the country or in the national interest, but for personal gain,” he said on Friday, only indirectly talking about the corruption allegations related to the Delhi excise (liquor sales) policy case of 2023 in which Kejriwal and 22 others were recently discharged by a trial court. Chadha praised PM Narendra Modi’s “performance record”.At the joining ceremony at the BJP HQ, among those present was Tarun Chugh, a BJP national general secretary with roots in Punjab's Amritsar. Controversy over RS nominationsThe AAP had faced criticism when it chose for Punjab’s Rajya Sabha seats two non-Punjab residents in the first batch — Pathak from Chhattisgarh and Delhi-based Chadha. The others were from Punjab: Harbhajan Singh, Mittal and another industrialist Sanjeev Arora.When two more seats fell vacant months later, the party chose two Padma Shri-winning eminent Punjabis — Seechewal and Vikramjit Singh Sahney. Sahney has now also defected.The “outsider” argument found a mention at the time even in a song by slain rapper Sidhu Moosewala, who had been in the Congress. In his song ‘Scapegoat', a verse in Punjabi said, “Tell me who is responsible for what happened with the Rajya Sabha seats, and tell me who is the traitor now.”The Rajya Sabha collapse is the most dramatic single-day setback AAP has suffered in Punjab, or in its history overall. The Lok Sabha numbers also were not encouraging; in 2024, main Opposition party Congress won seven of Punjab's 13 Lok Sabha seats. AAP won three.The BJP drew a complete blank while the SAD won one, with two seats going to independents aligned with hardline Sikh groupings.The AAP has since been focusing on welfare-scheme delivery, including most recently the fulfilment of a promise of ₹1,100 monthly to almost all women of the state.Fractured opposition, advantage BJP?The BJP, which has just two MLAs in a House of 117, enters the contest with trademark aggression. It has never won power in Punjab on its own, and in its best years it was a junior partner to the SAD.Yet, Union home minister Amit Shah declared at a Moga rally in March that the party will contest 2027 entirely on its own, formally ending any prospect of an Akali-BJP alliance revival. “You have given a chance to all political parties. Now give us one chance," he said.The BJP secured around 19% of Punjab's vote in the 2024 LS polls contesting alone, but got no seats. Its leaders have said the base can be expanded, drawing parallels with Assam, Tripura and Uttarakhand.But those are states without Punjab's demographics, its Sikh majority, and the recent history of the agitation that ended the SAD-BJP alliance in 2020 and made PM Narendra Modi walk back on three farm laws. The party’s presence in rural areas remains limited.It has been building its Punjab roster through inductions from across the political spectrum.Most recently in April, HS Phoolka — the human rights lawyer who won the Dhaka seat for AAP in 2017 and remained Leader of Opposition before walking away saying he wanted to focus solely on his fight for the 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims — formally joined the BJP.But the state election is not an AAP-vs-BJP narrative, as it was in case of Chadha’s switch.The 2027 contest is shaping up as a multi-cornered fight involving the AAP, the Congress, the Shiromani Akali Dal hoping for a region-specific narrative; and the BJP hoping to make it on its own at last.The Congress so far has some infighting issues with state unit chief Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, Leader of Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa, and former CM Charanjit Singh Channi all carrying big reputations. Sukhbir Singh Badal-led SAD is in a longer-term rebuild.The switch by Chadha and others, however, “has made a mockery of the people’s verdict”, according to political analyst and history professor Harjeshwar Pal Singh.“A party (BJP) having two members in an assembly now has six members in Rajya Sabha from Punjab,” he underlined, adding, “The brazenness of the BJP is there for all to see. Every tactic has been used, including central agencies.” Ashok Mittal, who had recently been made AAP’s deputy RS leader in place of Chadha, faced ED raids earlier this month.CM Mann pointedly noted that the MPs who switched are not grassroots leaders.Leading Opposition parties have, however, found a stick to beat the AAP with, not sparing the BJP either.Punjab Congress chief Warring said, "The AAP has no ideology. This was natural. These MPs have no relevance in Punjab. AAP should remain aware — their 50 MLAs might join the BJP next! Only the MPs have left the party for now.”The SAD's Daljit Singh Cheema called the defections evidence of “a systemic failure of trust, internal democracy and ideological coherence”, demanding both Kejriwal and Mann step down as AAP chief and CM respectively. “Punjab cannot be reduced to a laboratory for political experiments,” he said.As for the friction between Chadha and the AAP spilling into Punjab, Bhagwant Mann’s AAP-led state government recently withdrew his Z-plus security cover. The very next day, the Centre restored security to him.Accused of only raising “soft issues” such as mobile recharge validity, Raghav Chadha has defended his Punjab record by sharing compilations of his parliamentary speeches on issues such as farm-produce prices, groundwater depletion, honour for freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, and the state's fiscal dues from the Centre.As an elector, he cast his vote in Punjab's Anandpur Sahib in the last Lok Sabha election.