AAP MPs Duck Anti-Defection Law; Would BJP Benefit in Panjab Polls?

April

2026

The defection by seven Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Members of Parliament (MPs) was possible by them cleverly using the Anti-Defection Law (ADL) to their advantage. Ironically, the ADL was enacted in 1985 in India to prevent political defection and not to facilitate it. Before ADL was implemented, legislators elected on a party’s ticket would leave that party to join the ruling party in most cases, or topple the incumbent government and help form another government resulting in rampant political instability. Raghav Chadha and other MPs who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) voluntarily gave up the membership of their original political party which would bring them under ADL’s Paragraph 2(1)(a) of the 10^th Schedule, subjecting them to disqualification. However, Chadha submitted a letter to the chairman of Rajya Sabha (Upper house of Parliament, RS), CP Radhakrishnan, claiming that he and the six others constitute two-thirds of the members of AAP in the RS. Therefore, the provision of disqualification would not apply to them. The 10^th Schedule also contained Paragraph 3 that provided grounds for immunity to the legislators—if they pleaded that they belong to a faction that has arisen in the party as a result of a split and that they constitute two-thirds of the legislature party in that legislature. The walk out was carefully planned and might have been in the works for months. The speculation is BJPs decision to accommodate AAP MPs was taken around the time Home Minister Amit Shah visited Panjab for a rally on 14 Mar. But whether it will help BJPs case in the 2027 Panjab elections is open to debate. While some believe that it will strengthen the party when it comes to public perception and enhance its negotiating leverage for an alliance with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), others like an Indian National Congress MP, who chose to remain anonymous, believe that ‘Panjab voters are a different lot and they don’t like gaddars (traitors)’, as was evident when protestors spray-painted the word gaddar on defected MPs Harbhajan Singh and Ashok Mittal homes’ boundary walls. The Congress MP also said that none of the seven MPs carried a strong grassroots base that the BJP could leverage within the state (earlier coverage).