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Informist, Monday, Apr. 27, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Rajya Sabha website shows the seven Aam Aadmi Party members of the Upper House who defected to the Bharatiya Janata Party last week as BJP members even as legal questions over the move remain unanswered. The official record now shows the BJP's strength in the Council of States to be 113, up from 106 Friday.

 

On Friday, AAP Rajya Sabha members Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, and Ashok Mittal announced at a press conference that they and four others were quitting their party and joining the BJP. Hours later, the three lawmakers drove to the BJP headquarters and formally joined the party in the presence of BJP president Nitin Nabin, who is also a member of the Rajya Sabha.

 

The other defectors, who were not present at the press conference, are Swati Maliwal, Rajendra Gupta, Vikram Sahni, and former cricket star Harbhajan Singh. Chadha argued that since more than two-thirds of the AAP's Rajya Sabha members--seven of the total 10--were breaking away, the anti-defection law would not apply to them.

 

Sanjay Singh, AAP's leader in the Upper House, has submitted a petition to Rajya Sabha Chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan, demanding termination of the membership of the seven rebels. AAP argues that the defection is a clear violation of the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, or the anti-defection law.

 

Supreme Court lawyer and former Union minister Kapil Sibal told reporters Saturday that the defecting AAP members' argument is flawed and they are liable to be disqualified. He explained that for elected members to a legislative body to be able to switch to another party, their parent political party must first adopt a resolution to merge with that party.

 

"Members of a parliamentary party cannot legally switch parties unless their parent political organisation has done so," Sibal said. "In this case, the AAP has not merged with the BJP, so the argument of the defecting members does not hold." However, he also said the Rajya Sabha chairman is unlikely to give a decision in favour of AAP and the matter will drag on in courts for years.

 

The Indian National Congress Monday said the BJP had made a mockery of the people's mandate in Punjab as it has seven members in the Council of States from a state where it had only about 7% of the vote share in the last assembly election.

 

"The Rajya Sabha is a representation of the states," All India Congress Committee Treasurer Ajay Maken, also a member of the Rajya Sabha, told a press conference here. "Members of the legislative assembly elect Rajya Sabha members. Now, with this defection, we have a situation where the BJP has two MLAs in Punjab but seven MPs in the Rajya Sabha."  End

 

Reported by Asim Khan

Edited by Rajeev Pai

 

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