Seven AAP MP’s including Pathak and Chadha Defect to BJP

April

2026

In a major setback to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seven of its Rajya Sabha (Upper house of Parliament, RS) Members of Parliament (MPs)—six from Panjab—quit the party on 24 Apr to join the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). RS Chairman CP Radhakrishnan accepted the merger on 27 Apr. The MPs who have signed the defection letter and given their consent are Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Swati Maliwal, Harbhajan Singh, Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Ashok Mittal, and Rajender Gupta. The move takes the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance's strength in RS to 148 from 141. AAP party leader Sanjay Singh said Panjab will ‘never forget these traitors who stabbed the people in the back’. Panjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann added, ‘The BJP’s lack of political ground (in Panjab) has pushed it towards such tactics’. Singh also mentioned that Operation Lotus is being executed in the state and that government bodies Enforcement Directorate and Central Bureau of Investigation are being used to execute this—referring to the raid and searches on the now defected MP Ashok Mittal’s education group on 15 Apr, believed to be an attempt to pressurize him to join the BJP—a political tactic BJP has used in the past. While AAP had suspended its Deputy Leader in RS Raghav Chadha on 2 Apr following internal rifts, it is strategist Sandeep Pathak’s loss that the party will suffer the most. Pathak had built the party organization from scratch before the Panjab legislative polls in 2022. Therefore for the BJP, Pathak is the ‘more precious’ import from AAP, considering that Panjab is set to go to polls in 2027. The AAP had faced criticism when it chose two non-Panjab residents for Panjab’s RS seats in 2022—Pathak from Chhattisgarh and Chadha from Delhi. Harbhajan Singh, Mittal, and industrialist Sanjeev Arora were from Panjab. The party later chose two Padma Shri-winning eminent Panjabis—Balbir Singh Seechewal and Vikramjit Singh Sahney of which Sahney has also defected. Seechewal claimed that Sahney had approached him to join them but he refused saying, ‘The defectors had a responsibility towards the party which sent them to RS... But they have committed bewafai (betrayal) with AAP’ (earlier coverage).