The Rajya Sabha Secretariat has updated its portal which now shows the breakaway group of seven MPs of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as MPs of Bharatiya Janata Party. This means, the Vice President and Chairman of the Rajya Shabha, CP Radhakrishnan has accepted the plea from the defecting parliamentarians.
These MPs include Raghav Chadda, Sandeep Phatak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikramjeet Sahney, and Swati Maliwal. With this, the AAP will now have Sanjay Singh and Narain Dass Gupta from Delhi and Sant Balbir Singh from Punjab in the Rajya Sabha. At the same time, BJP’s strength went up to 113.
The party has three members — Raj Kumar Chabbewal, Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer and Malvinder Singh Kang (all from Punjab) — in the Lok Sabha.
The AAP had on Sunday moved a petition before the RS Chairman seeking the termination of the membership of the seven MPs, who had switched sides. Party MP MP Sanjay Singh said he has submitted a petition to Chairman Radhakrishnan seeking the disqualification of the seven party MPs in the Upper House, who recently quit the AAP and announced their merger with the BJP.
On April 24, Chadda announced: “As per the Constitution, two-thirds of the total MPs of a party can merge with another party. We have submitted a letter to Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan in this regard today, along with all the required documents.” Since the numbers represent more than 2/3rd of the total strength of the party in the Rajya Sabha, they will not face action under the anti-defection law.
“The BJP has once again betrayed Punjabis,” AAP National Convener Arvind Kejriwal said in in a post on X. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann dubbed the AAP’s Rajya Sabha members who quit the party as “gaddars” (traitors). “BJP was trying to break the AAP and had betrayed the people of Punjab. When they did not find anything against Bhagwant Mann, they tried to break AAP,” said Mann.
According to him, the BJP is perturbed why Mann is becoming the leader of the people. “People of Punjab are with the AAP; they firmly stand with the party,” he said, adding that the party is bigger than an individual, and 6-7 people who have left do not comprise Punjab.
Published on April 27, 2026