In one of the most dramatic political developments of the year, seven Rajya Sabha MPs of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) staged a coordinated defection and merged with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday. This was the largest coordinated defection in the Upper House in recent years. The Week Prominent faces such as Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, and Swati Maliwal quit the AAP, dealing a severe blow to the party’s numerical strength in Parliament and its preparedness for upcoming elections. Northlines The announcement was made at a press conference where Chadha stated: “We have decided that we, the two-thirds members belonging to the AAP in Rajya Sabha, exercise the provisions of the Constitution of India and merge ourselves with the BJP.”
Raghav Chadha was the face and the voice of this revolt. One of AAP’s most recognisable faces, Chadha has been a key spokesperson and strategist for the party. A Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, he played a central role in shaping AAP’s national narrative and outreach. Bombaysamachar’s break with the party had been building for weeks. The AAP on April 2 removed Chadha as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha and accused him of shying away from raising his voice against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India TV News Chadha pushed back publicly, sharing a video on Instagram titled “Voice Raised Price Paid” a compilation of his parliamentary highlights, insisting his record spoke for itself. At the press conference, he delivered a charged emotional statement: “The AAP, that I nurtured with my blood and sweat and to which I gave 15 years of my youth, has completely strayed from its principles, values and core morals.” It was Chadha who announced the merger on behalf of all seven MPs, positioning himself as the ideological voice of the breakaway group.
Sandeep Pathak was a key behind-the-scenes architect of AAP’s organisational expansion, and perhaps the most quietly powerful figure in the group. One of Arvind Kejriwal’s most trusted internal lieutenants, Pathak was central to the party’s on-ground mobilisation in Punjab the state that gave AAP its most decisive electoral victory in 2022. He was present at the press conference with Chadha and was among the first three to publicly announce the merger. ThePrint His departure leaves a gaping hole in AAP’s organizational machinery precisely at a time when the party is preparing for the next Punjab assembly elections. More than any other defector in this group, Pathak’s exit signals a deep structural crisis within AAP’s inner circle.
Ashok Mittal brought a particularly ironic chapter to this saga. An educationist by background and the founder of Lovely Professional University, one of India’s largest private universities, Mittal had been elevated by AAP just days before the defection. He had ironically just been appointed as the party’s deputy head in the Rajya Sabha in Chadha’s place and he too quit the party. ThePrint His defection so soon after his elevation was a deeply embarrassing twist for the Kejriwal camp. To the outside world, it appeared that AAP’s attempt to stabilize its Rajya Sabha leadership had instead accelerated the collapse. Mittal was seen as a credibility-lending figure for AAP’s pro-education governance image, and his departure closes an important chapter in that narrative.
Harbhajan Singh brought the star power. One of India’s greatest cricketers famously known as “The Turbanator” the legendary off-spinner who represented India in over 100 Test matches had brought mass appeal and enormous name recognition to AAP’s Rajya Sabha presence. Nominated to the Upper House from Punjab, Harbhajan’s defection is being read as a signal to the large Sikh voter base that was once solidly behind AAP. Of the seven MPs who defected, six come from Punjab The Week, making this exodus a deeply Punjab-centric political earthquake. For a party that governs Punjab today, the symbolism of Harbhajan walking away is as loud as any political speech.
Swati Maliwal was perhaps the least surprising name on the list, yet her inclusion gave the mass exodus a broader ideological dimension. An activist-turned-politician, Maliwal came to national attention during the Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement. She served as Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women from 2015 to 2024, leading campaigns on women’s safety and anti-trafficking. Bombaysamachar Her relationship with AAP had already deteriorated dramatically following a high-profile assault controversy involving Arvind Kejriwal’s aide inside the Chief Minister’s residence in 2024. She had since become one of the most publicly critical voices against Kejriwal within the party. Her joining the BJP completes a journey that many political observers saw coming for over a year.
Rajinder Gupta represents the business-political bridge within this group. A businessman and industrialist, Gupta became a Rajya Sabha MP from AAP in 2025 and was awarded the Padma Shri for his contributions to trade and industry. The Week Known for his roles in Punjab’s planning boards across governments, he has focused on economic development and rural employment. Bombaysamachar His background as a cross-party technocrat who has served under multiple governments made him one of the more politically flexible figures in AAP’s Rajya Sabha group. His departure reinforces AAP insider claims that central agencies may have played a role in the decision making of some of the businessmen-MPs in this group.
Vikram Sahney rounds out the seven with an international profile. Also a Padma Shri awardee, Sahney joined AAP in 2022 and had earlier received the International Peace Award from the President of Mauritius. The Week A prominent businessman with global connections, Sahney’s entry into AAP was seen as the party’s attempt to diversify its funding networks and business outreach. His exit now firmly closes that chapter, and like Gupta, his ties to the business world make his departure particularly significant in the context of AAP’s allegations about ED and CBI pressure on its businessmen-MPs.
The official reason offered by the seven MPs is ideological disillusionment. Chadha and the others stated publicly that AAP had strayed from the founding principles of the movement that was born out of the Anna Hazare anti-corruption agitation of 2011. They claimed that the party had abandoned its moral compass and was no longer the vehicle of change it once promised to be. However, the picture behind the scenes is considerably more complex.
The development comes against the backdrop of a turbulent phase for the Aam Aadmi Party over the last two years, when several of its top leaders, including former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, were arrested in connection with the alleged excise-policy scam, leaving the party grappling with a leadership vacuum and testing its ability to function under pressure. Northlines During that period, second-rung leaders like Chadha stepped in to keep both the government and organization running, but that experience also apparently deepened internal fault lines about who held real power and who was being sidelined.
AAP insiders claim that action by central agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI could have played a part in influencing the decision of some of the MPs who were businessmen from Punjab, while the others were unhappy with their shrinking political role within the party. The Week AAP also accused the BJP of launching “Operation Lotus” a term used to describe the saffron party’s alleged strategy of systematically peeling away opposition legislators to destabilize rival governments. Some AAP sources claimed that the move was designed to destabilise the party before the assembly elections in Punjab next year.
This is the most important democratic question arising from these defections and the answer, on every count, is an unambiguous yes.All seven of these MPs are members of the Rajya Sabha, meaning they were not directly elected by ordinary voters but by state legislators who voted for them specifically as AAP representatives. The voters of Punjab trusted AAP’s MLAs, who in turn sent these individuals to Parliament. By switching to the BJP AAP’s principal rival and the very party AAP was founded in opposition to they have fundamentally broken the chain of democratic trust that put them there. Escaping legal disqualification under the anti-defection law is not the same as escaping moral accountability to the electorate.
Under India’s 10th Schedule, a merger is technically permissible if at least two-thirds of a legislative party’s group participates. With AAP holding 10 Rajya Sabha seats, at least seven members are part of the move Bombaysamachar, which technically satisfies the constitutional threshold. But constitutional legality is the floor of democratic conduct, not the ceiling. The people of Punjab, whose political will is ultimately the source of every parliamentary mandate, deserve a chance to pass their own verdict on this dramatic change of loyalty.
AAP spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar made the moral argument bluntly: “Punjabis are watching that the 7 MPs who were sent to Parliament by them have now supported a party which killed 800 farmers. BJP calls farmers terrorists, and these 7 MPs supported them today. This is no less than ‘gaddari’. Public will give a reply to this.” Whether or not one accepts AAP’s political framing, the underlying democratic grievance is legitimate. These MPs were sent to Delhi on one party’s platform and are now serving another’s agenda entirely.
If these leaders genuinely believe that the BJP is the right platform for India’s future as they publicly claim then the most principled, most courageous, and most credible course of action available to them is to resign their Rajya Sabha seats and contest fresh elections under the BJP banner. That would silence their critics decisively and give their political convictions the democratic legitimacy they currently lack. Staying in seats won under AAP’s name while now advancing BJP’s political interests is convenient, but it is a form of electoral dishonesty that ultimately corrodes public trust in representative democracy itself.
For the AAP, the timing of these departures is particularly crucial. The party is gearing up for next year’s electoral battles in Gujarat, Goa and Punjab, where it hopes to consolidate and expand its presence beyond Delhi. Northlines Losing seven parliamentarians in one stroke including its most nationally recognized spokesperson, its organizational general, its star celebrity face, and several of its prominent business-linked figures is a body blow that will take considerable time to absorb. Meanwhile, the Congress party has not missed the opportunity to twist the knife. Congress leader Rajendra Pal Gautam alleged that the leaders who are left in the AAP will also join the BJP in the coming days, and even suggested that Arvind Kejriwal himself may follow.
Whether these seven are visionaries who genuinely saw the writing on the wall, or opportunists who abandoned a battered ship the moment a more powerful vessel came alongside, history and — far more importantly the voters of Punjab will ultimately be the judges. The most democratic, most honest, and most politically courageous thing these seven MPs can now do is simple: go back to the people, seek a fresh mandate, and let the electorate decide if their journey from AAP to BJP was an act of principle or of betrayal.