ECOSTANI | What defections before the Punjab poll mean for AAP, Arvind Kejriwal

ON apr 24, vii of 10 Rajya Sabha members, including Raghav Chadha, defected from Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi company (AAP) to the Bharatiya Janata company (BJP), scoring the first major desertion of lawmakers from the party.The desertion was the latest in a series of setbacks for the party, which political novices founded in 2013 to “uproot corruption from public life”. Kejriwal’s image of a frugal politician has also taken a beating over allegations of splurge at his official residence when he was the Delhi chief minister. The BJP went to town ahead of the 2025 Delhi election, calling the residence a “Sheesh Mahal” or a luxurious palace of mirrors, and stormed to power in the national capital.Kejriwal’s insistence on staying in a bungalow in the upscale Lutyens’ Delhi after losing the Delhi polls has vindicated his opponents, who maintain that his pledges to end VIP culture lacked sincerity.Kejriwal’s shift to realpolitik first led to the expulsions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan and psephologist Yogendra Yadav over differences regarding candidate selection in 2015. Kejriwal, who quit as an Indian Revenue Service officer and formed the non-government organisation before founding AAP, wanted to focus on winnability. Bhushan and Yadav wanted integrity to be the core for candidate selection for the Delhi assembly polls.Since then, top leaders, such as poet-turned-politician Kumar Vishwas, left the party. Some quit because the party was not following its founding ideology. Others left because they did not secure a desirable position in return for their contributions to the party.The public service and integrity apparently took a backseat as winning elections became the biggest focus. For a party formed and run initially through public contributions, the AAP pumped significant money into the Uttarakhand, Goa, and Himachal polls, with the sources of funds opaque.The BJP alleged that kickbacks from the now-scrapped 2021-22 Delhi excise policy funded the AAP’s 2022 Goa election campaign, dealing a major blow to the party founded on an anti-corruption plank. A trial court in February acquitted Kejriwal and other AAP leaders in the excise policy case. The joy of the acquittal proved short-lived with the defection of the AAP Rajya Sabha members, mostly from Punjab, the only state where the party is in power.The AAP provided an alternative to the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab. It won 20 seats in the 117-member assembly in 2017, becoming the main Opposition party, replacing the SAD. Sensing an opportunity, the AAP deployed all its resources and won the 2022 Punjab assembly election. Kejriwal gave Chadda the responsibility of overseeing the Punjab government’s functioning. Chadda was once seen as more powerful than chief minister Bhagwant Mann.What went wrong? An AAP leader said trouble began when central agencies started probing alleged irregularities in the Delhi Jal Board when Chadda was its vice chairman. A second AAP leader said Kejriwal came to know that Chadha was trying for a back-channel with the BJP even as several party leaders were facing arrest or were in jail.The second leader added that Chadha’s absence during the 2025 Delhi assembly polls on the pretext of an eye ailment and refusal to take the BJP head-on escalated tensions with Kejriwal. He said Chadha’s removal as deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha was a calculated move. Kejriwal had anticipated Chadha joining the BJP before the Punjab polls.What Kejriwal had not anticipated was that Ashok Mittal, the founder chancellor of Lovely University and Rajya Sabha member, would quit. Mittal, in a message to Kejriwal, is believed to have cited growing pressure from the Central investigation agencies to align with Chadda.Neither Chadda nor any of the six other defectors has much political clout in Punjab. Their joining the BJP was timed for maximum impact in Gujarat, where the local body polls were held on April 26, to set a narrative that Kejriwal cannot keep his flock together. Kejriwal campaigned extensively in Gujarat for over a month, projecting AAP as an alternative to Congress and the BJP.For Kejriwal, the bigger challenge is to keep his assembly members together in Punjab ahead of the polls due in February 2027. There is a buzz about discontentment among the assembly members, and the probability of a split in the AAP legislative party before the 2027 election.Overall, all is not well. District-level AAP leaders have been accused of corruption, and there are reports of infighting as well. The killing of at least three AAP leaders in Punjab in the past six months has hurt the party’s image. Kejriwal’s continued influence in running the government is another sore point.A former AAP leader, who worked closely with Kejriwal, said the Punjab election will be his toughest political test till now. “He faces three opponents [Congress, Akalis, and BJP] and does not have much to show. The only thing he has with him is the quality of persistence,” he said.Will his persistence work in Punjab, where Kejriwal is seen as an outsider? He has put his most trusted lieutenant, Manish Sisodia, in charge of Punjab. The two would like to salvage AAP in Punjab, like what they did in 2014, eight months after Kejriwal resigned as Delhi chief minister and returned with a full majority.