Raghav Chadha is reading up on ‘power’. So what's his next move on BJP, his RS seat, and Punjab? Key indications so far

IN the blank of to a lesser extent than a hebdomad, Raghav Chadha has gone from beingness Aam Aadmi Party's surrogate leader in the Rajya Sabha to its most publicly attacked sitting MP — stripped of his post, blocked from speaking in Parliament from the party's quota; and accused by his own colleagues of being "compromised" and in league with the Centre’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).Two questions now dominate political conversation: will Chadha formally move to the BJP, as AAP leaders are increasingly alleging? And if he does, or is pushed out, does he keep his Rajya Sabha seat?Neither has a simple answer.Plus, there's the Punjab angle.Chadha’s turn, in his own words and AAP'sThe immediate public show of the fallout was AAP's letter to the Rajya Sabha Secretariat on April 2, replacing Chadha as the party's deputy leader in the Upper House of Parliament with his fellow Punjab MP, industrialist Ashok Mittal.The party has 10 members in the Rajya Sabha, seven from Punjab and three from Delhi. In the Lok Sabha, it has three MPs, all from Punjab.It asked the RS secretariat not to allot Raghav Chadha speaking time from AAP's quota.Chadha, 37, responded the same day, but in riddles and dialogues at first. "Don't mistake my silence for my defeat," he said in a video posted on X, adding: "I am that river which becomes a flood when the time comes."By Monday, April 6, he was sending cryptic yet pointed messages apparently to AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal and the leadership. "Somebody gifted me a book this week... I turned to chapter 1 – ‘Never outshine the master’. Some books arrive exactly when they are meant to," he posted on Instagram. The book: 'The 48 Laws of Power' by American author Robert Greene.His party's senior leaders have been combative in turn — a style the AAP is known for ever since Arvind Kejriwal and the founding group, including Chadha, emerged from the anti-corruption movement of 2011-12.Delhi AAP chief Saurabh Bharadwaj accused Chadha of doing "soft PR", or public relations/publicity, in Parliament by raising allegedly less pointed issues like airport food prices and quick-commerce delivery timelines, instead of confronting the BJP-led central government on harder political ground."Because a small party has very limited time in Parliament, if someone is raising the issue of samosas during that time, it is more important to raise the big issues of the country," Bharadwaj said.Chief minister Bhagwant Mann of Punjab, from where Chadha is MP, responded directly whether Chadha was "compromised". He said emphatically: "Yes!""If there is a party line taken on any issue, like in Gujarat where cases have been registered against 160 AAP volunteers; instead of speaking on those, if someone raises issues of samosa rates, pizza delivery, won't you doubt that the person is speaking from some other side, some other station?" Mann, a comedian-turned-politician, said.Atishi, the former Delhi chief minister, cited specific acts of omission in Chadha’s record. She said Chadha refused to sign an impeachment motion against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar — an opposition initiative backed by several parties — and did not raise the issue of LPG shortages even when asked to by the party amid the US-Iran war and the West Asia oil crisis. "Why are you so afraid of the BJP? Why are you afraid of questioning PM Modi?" she asked in a video, pointedly adding that when AAP leaders were protesting in police stations across Delhi during Arvind Kejriwal's nearly six-month incarceration in 2024, "you were in London because you had an eye operation”.She later said, “So many Opposition leaders got scared and went to the BJP. It's likely that Raghav Chadha will be next.” Chadha has denied each allegation individually. On the walkout claim, he said, “I challenge you to cite even one instance when the Opposition decided to walk out and I did not support them.” On the impeachment motion: "Only 50 signatures were required out of 105 Opposition MPs in the Upper House. When six or seven MPs from AAP did not sign, why am I being singled out?" He did not name who those AAP MPs were.He called the entire AAP attack on him "scripted". "Same language, same words, same allegations. This is no coincidence, but a coordinated attack," he said on Saturday, quoting a line from the Bollywood film ‘Dhurandhar’: "Ghayal hoon isiliye ghatak hoon" (I am wounded, therefore I am dangerous).On his Punjab record specifically, Chadha on Sunday released a video compilation of his interventions in the Rajya Sabha, listing issues he said he had raised. These included the demand for legal guarantee of minimum support price for farm produce; attention to groundwater depletion; calling for the Bharat Ratna for freedom fighter Bhagat Singh; dues owed by the Centre to Punjab; and the Kartarpur Sahib Corridor expansion. He had also made a visit to Punjab during the devastating floods last year."Punjab isn't a talking point for me. It is my home, my duty, my soil and my soul," he said. He called the video a "small trailer”, adding, "Picture abhi baaki hai," to say, the real thing will come later.His Instagram reel on the issue was liked by film star Priyanka Chopra, who happens to be a cousin of his actor wife Parineeti Chopra, and top Punjab movie star Sonam Bajwa, beyond the political sphere.Kejriwal has maintained complete silence on the issue, as of April 6 evening.A Delhi-Punjab fault lineThe tensions between Chadha and the AAP leadership have deeper roots than a few unsigned motions or “soft issues” like samosa prices and prepaid recharge validity periods.Though a Punjabi, Chadha is a Delhi boy educated at Modern School; a chartered accountant who worked at Deloitte and Grant Thornton before joining the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare in 2011 that eventually became the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).He won his only direct election in 2020, from the Rajendra Nagar constituency in the Delhi assembly elections, with over 57% of the vote. Two years into his MLA tenure, the party sent him to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab after AAP's landslide win there in 2022.The youngest Rajya Sabha member at the age of 33 at the time, Chadha was credited with helping engineer that win as the state's co-incharge for the party.The elevation generated some resentment in Punjab, and he faced allegations of acting as a "super CM" while being seen as an outsider. The party even suspended its MLA, former IPS officer Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, in 2024 after he made public allegations against Chadha among other attacks on the party.Chadha apparently withdrew from active Punjab AAP affairs through 2023-24, and from the party more broadly, around the time when Kejriwal and his second-in-command Manish Sisodia faced corruption charges in Delhi.He did meet Kejriwal after his release from jail, which came after six months of incarceration, but was only a peripheral presence in the AAP's Delhi assembly campaign for 2025 — a fight the party lost to the BJP after a decade in power.Since then, Kejriwal and Sisodia have focused intensely on Punjab, where the election due in early 2027 is key for the party as that’s the only state where it has a government, or is powerful at all outside of Delhi.What BJP has said, what it hasn'tThe BJP's response to the episode has been calibrated. Its Delhi unit president Virendra Sachdeva called the AAP move to bar Chadha from speaking in Parliament "highly objectionable”, and even defended his record as an MP. “Kejriwal first uses people and then gets rid of them,” Sachdeva said. He even dedicated a an Urdu she’r or couplet to Chadha: "Bahut mazboot rishte the, kuch kamzor logon se", roughly translating to, "I had very strong ties with some very weak people."Asked pointedly whether Chadha would join the BJP, Sachdeva said, "It is up to him to decide his future."Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar also used the moment to take aim at the AAP, the ruling party in his state. He said in an interview with The Tribune that the Chadha episode "signalled the beginning of the end for AAP". He did not make an offer to Chadha as such, though it remains to be seen if Chadha is even looking for a political move at the state level in Punjab, where he faces “Delhi-wala” or “outsider” jibes from outside his party already, and now also from within.The BJP’s door is apparently ajar, but no one inside has yet extended a hand — at least not in public.But the AAP has pointed towards Chadha's social media cleanup as a mega hint on his next move. All posts critical of Modi and the BJP have reportedly been deleted from his X account, according to screenshots shared by Delhi AAP chief Bharadwaj.Parliament seat safe for nowWhatever be Chadha's political intentions, his constitutional position is currently secure. His Rajya Sabha term runs until 2028, and the AAP cannot simply remove him from Parliament. It can remove him from its internal party posts, which it has already done.Under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which covers the anti-defection law introduced by the 52nd Amendment in 1985, a Rajya Sabha member can lose their seat only in two circumstances: by voluntarily giving up party membership, or by defying the party whip on a vote in the House.Courts have held over the years that "voluntarily giving up membership" need not be a formal resignation. It can be inferred from conduct too, such as attending rival party rallies, campaigning for another party, or making public statements that constitute a sustained break from the party.A 2017 precedent exists, wherein two Rajya Sabha MPs of the Bihar-based BJP ally JD(U), Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar, were disqualified by the RS chairman after their attending rallies organised by opposition parties was cited by the JD(U) as proof of their defection.But that threshold of such an interpretation is high, and the final power is largely discretionary.The decision on any disqualification petition rests with the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, a position held by the Vice President of India, currently CP Radhakrishnan. The Constitution specifies no deadline for a decision even if a party makes a case under the anti-defection law.The Supreme Court, in 2023, said cases be resolved within three months. But the law has not been amended to stipulate such a timeline.A comparable precedent for Chadha's instance exists from the AAP itself. Its Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal made serious public allegations against Kejriwal and his personal secretary, and the matter reached court; yet she remains a member to this day, and even continues to attack AAP leadership publicly.