Seven of the 10 Aam Aadmi Party MPs in Rajya Sabha were merging with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Raghav Chadha said on Friday.
Chadha claimed that two-thirds of the AAP’s members in the Upper House of Parliament were supporting him.
He made the announcement at a press conference alongside AAP MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal. However, he claimed that other AAP MPs Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Swati Maliwal were supporting the decision to merge with the BJP.
Before the split, the AAP had 10 members in the Rajya Sabha. The party has three MPs in the Lok Sabha.
“The AAP, which I nurtured with my blood and sweat, and gave 15 years of my youth to, has deviated from its principles, values and core morals,” Chadha told reporters. “Now this party does not work in the interest of the nation but for its personal benefits...For the past few years, I could feel that I am the right man in the wrong party.”
Chadha said that he was “distancing” himself from AAP.
A letter expressing their intent to merge with the BJP’s legislature party had been submitted to the Rajya Sabha chairperson, he added.
The split came just over a week after the Enforcement Directorate on April 15 conducted raids at the home of Mittal, as well as several other premises linked to him in Punjab and Haryana, in connection with alleged foreign exchange violations.
The searches had been conducted two weeks after Mittal replaced Chadha on April 2 as the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.
Chadha had been removed as the party’s deputy leader in the Upper House following his alleged absence from recent party activities.
He had also not publicly reacted after a Delhi court in February cleared former Chief Minister and party chief Arvind Kejriwal, and former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and 21 others in the Delhi excise policy case.
Sanjay Singh, the leader of the AAP legislature party in the Rajya Sabha, said that the seven MPs who were joining the BJP had “backstabbed the people of Punjab”. Except Maliwal, all other MPs had been elected from Punjab, where the AAP is in power.
The BJP has launched “Operation Lotus” to “obstruct the good work of the Bhagwant Mann government” in Punjab, he added.
“Operation Lotus” is a term used by Opposition parties to describe alleged attempts by the BJP to break away their legislators or topple Opposition governments in states.
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