Raghav Chaddha joins BJP
Rajya Sabha member from Punjab Raghav Chadha resigned from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday after months of tension with the party leadership. He said that his own party had tried to silence him.
Chadha will join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) along with Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal. Addressing a press conference, he said, “We have decided that we, two-thirds of AAP members in the Rajya Sabha, are using the provisions of the Constitution of India to seek a merger with the BJP.”
The trio claimed that seven out of 10 AAP Rajya Sabha MPs have left the party.
Chadha said other AAP Rajya Sabha MPs who joined the BJP are Harbhajan Singh, Rajendra Gupta, Vikram Sawhney, Swati Maliwal, Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal.
Merging with the support of two-thirds of a party’s members allows MPs to avoid disqualification under the anti-defection law.
The move by Chadha and other MPs was strongly opposed by AAP leaders, including Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who termed them “traitors”.
Addressing a press conference, Mann said that BJP has betrayed the people of the state by trying to break AAP.
“When they found nothing against Bhagwant Mann, they tried to break the AAP,” Mann said.
He also said that the party is bigger than any individual and the six or seven people who have left do not represent Punjab.
