New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is planning to take major action against 7 of its rebel MPs in Rajya Sabha, who quit the party on Friday. The party will file a petition with the Rajya Sabha Secretariat by this evening. The party has said that Raghav Chadha and other MPs who quit cannot merge the party with the BJP.
The AAP demanded that the membership of all the Rajya Sabha MPs who have quit should be cancelled. The party is exploring legal options against its former members. It may soon approach court.
Seven of AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP’s Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Swati Maliwal and Vikram Shahni quit the party on Friday. They declared that they were merging with the BJP.
AAP left with only 3 MPs in Upper House
Following the resignation of 7 of its party MPs, the AAP is left with only 3 Rajya Sabha members now. Following the resignations, it is not known what would happen to AAP in the Rajya Sabha.
A similar political incident has happened earlier also in the country. At the time, Venkaiah Naidu was the Rajya Sabha Chairman, and CM Ramesh of the TDP along with 2/3rds of his party colleagues merged his party with the BJP. At the time, the Chairman approved the merger, and the members were not suspended.
Arvind Kejriwal’s reaction
Following the resignation of Raghav Chadha and 6 other party MPs from the AAP, party chief Arvind Kejriwal only had a 1-line response. He took to social media platform, ‘X’, and wrote, “The BJP has once again given Punjabis a shove.”
On the other hand, while quitting the AAP Chadha said that this was not the same party, which I had nurtured with my sweat and blood. He said that he gave 15 years of his youth to the party but now it had moved away from its very ideals. He said, “I am the right person in the wrong party.”
AAP had a total of 10 Rajya Sabha members. Three of them were from Delhi while 7 from Punjab.