💥 Breaking News | April 25, 2026
Raghav Chadha:
Left AAP.
Joined BJP.
Took Friends.
Okay. Breathe. Because what just happened to the Aam Aadmi Party in the Rajya Sabha is the kind of thing political science professors will be using as a case study for the next twenty years.
Raghav Chadha — yes, that Raghav Chadha, the Oxford-educated CA, Parineeti Chopra’s husband, and AAP’s former golden boy — has quit the party and joined the BJP. And he didn’t go alone. He took Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Swati Maliwal, Rajinder Gupta, and Vikramjit Singh Sahney along for the ride. That’s 7 out of AAP’s 10 Rajya Sabha MPs — gone. In one day.
If AAP’s Rajya Sabha group was a cricket team, they just lost seven players mid-match. And the umpire is still figuring out whether the game counts anymore. Let’s unpack all of this, because there’s a lot to unpack.
The Day AAP’s Upper House Fell Apart
April 24, 2026 is a date that AAP’s leadership will probably want to quietly erase from the calendar. Here’s how the day played out:
Raghav Chadha held a press conference alongside Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Kumar Mittal — and announced that two-thirds of AAP’s Rajya Sabha members were formally merging with the BJP. He claimed to have already submitted signed letters and formal paperwork to the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
This is the constitutional angle that makes it legally significant, not just politically dramatic. Under the Tenth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, if two-thirds of a legislature party merges with another party, it is treated as a valid merger — not a defection. Which means no disqualification. Which means Chadha and company were very deliberate about making sure they had the numbers before they went public.
Raghav Chadha stated that the AAP he had nurtured for 15 years had completely strayed from its founding principles, values, and core morals. He said the party was no longer working in the national interest but for personal gain. He added that over the past few years, he had increasingly felt he was “the right man in the wrong party.” He described having only two options — quit politics entirely or do “positive politics” with his energy and experience. He chose the latter.
Sandeep Pathak echoed similar sentiments, saying he had never expected this moment but felt he had no other choice after a decade with the party.
Who Left and Who Stayed
Let’s get to the actual roll call — because this story is really about people, not just numbers. Here’s every name you need to know.
The Seven Who Left AAP for BJP
🎤
📋
🎓
🏏
📢
🧳
🏛
The Three Who Stayed with AAP
✊
🏙
🌿
How We Got Here — The Slow Burn
This didn’t happen overnight. In fact, if you were paying attention, this was playing out in slow motion for months. Let’s run the timeline.
Why This Is Bigger Than Just a Party Switch
Look, politicians switch parties in India the way most people change phone cases. It happens. But what makes this particular mass exit so significant is the combination of scale, timing, and constitutional mechanism.
Chadha and team didn’t just quit — they claimed a formal merger under the Tenth Schedule. This means they needed 7 of 10 AAP Rajya Sabha MPs on board. They claim to have exactly that. If valid, no one faces disqualification. This was very carefully calculated, not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
With only 3 MPs remaining, AAP’s ability to raise issues, block legislation, or even get adequate floor time in the Rajya Sabha is severely damaged. This isn’t just embarrassing — it has real parliamentary consequences for any state they govern.
AAP still governs Punjab. But 7 of the MPs who left were either from Punjab or deeply linked to Punjab politics. The message this sends to voters and local leaders in Punjab — before the state elections — is anything but subtle.
Chadha is young, articulate, and recognizable. Harbhajan Singh is beloved across Punjab. These aren’t anonymous defectors — they’re faces that can actually move votes. The BJP didn’t just absorb some numbers; they absorbed real political capital.
Perhaps the most darkly funny subplot of the entire story: AAP removed Chadha as Deputy Leader on April 2nd and appointed Ashok Mittal as his replacement. Three weeks later, Mittal was standing next to Chadha at a BJP press conference. The replacement left with the person he replaced.
Arvind Kejriwal accused the BJP of actively engineering the exodus, calling it a betrayal of Punjab. He framed it as the ruling party trying to destabilise an opposition-run state government. The language was strong — but the reality on the ground is that AAP’s own internal tensions made this possible.
“AAP removed him. Replaced him. And then the replacement left with him. You honestly cannot make this stuff up.”
Reading the room — Indian Politics, April 2026
What AAP Is Saying About All This
AAP’s response has been a mix of outrage, damage control, and counter-narrative. Let’s be fair and cover their side too — because in politics, context matters.
🧾 AAP’s Position — Point by Point
- Kejriwal’s take: He accused BJP of orchestrating the entire exit and claimed it was about destabilising AAP’s government in Punjab rather than any genuine dissatisfaction with the party.
- Why Chadha was removed (per AAP): The party had accused him of avoiding Parliament walkouts, refusing to sign the impeachment motion against the Chief Election Commissioner, and generally not speaking in the party’s line.
- The “Voice Raised Price Paid” video: AAP dismissed it as coordinated optics — a public relations move to build sympathy before the exit rather than a genuine reflection of his work.
- Sanjay Singh: AAP’s remaining floor leader in the Rajya Sabha. He had publicly said he would oppose Chadha if he left. He’s now in a three-man group in a house where AAP once had ten. Awkward is an understatement.
The honest reality? Both narratives have some truth in them. Chadha was genuinely sidelined. The party did block his speaking time. But the clean, perfectly timed constitutional merger also suggests this exit was planned well in advance — with BJP very much involved in the logistics.
So Who Speaks for AAP in Parliament Now?
Great question. And the answer, honestly, is a bit thin right now.
With Chadha, Pathak, and even Mittal (Chadha’s own replacement) gone, AAP is left with three Rajya Sabha MPs: Sanjay Singh, Narain Dass Gupta, and Balbir Singh Seechewal.
Sanjay Singh remains the floor leader — the senior-most AAP voice in the upper house. He’s been the party’s loudest parliamentary presence since Chadha was sidelined in April. Now he carries the weight of the entire Rajya Sabha group on his shoulders, with two colleagues for company.
This raises a practical parliamentary reality: with just 3 MPs, AAP’s allocated floor time in the Rajya Sabha drops significantly. Their ability to independently move motions, lead debates, or hold up legislation is dramatically reduced. They can still speak — but they now do so as a much smaller, quieter presence in a house they recently had ten members in.
- Sanjay Singh (Delhi) — Floor leader, AAP’s loudest remaining voice in the upper house. Will lead parliamentary strategy going forward.
- Narain Dass Gupta (Delhi) — Steady, lower-profile MP. Loyal to the party throughout the crisis.
- Balbir Singh Seechewal (Punjab) — Environmentalist and Rajya Sabha member. The sole Punjab voice AAP retains in the upper house.
It’s a lean team. But in the Rajya Sabha, sometimes three members who are fully committed and disciplined can punch above their weight — if they’re given the floor time and if they stay coherent. The next parliamentary session will be a real test of how AAP recovers its voice in the upper house.
The Bigger Picture — What This Tells Us About AAP in 2026
Alright, let’s zoom out for a second — because this story isn’t just about Raghav Chadha and a press conference. It’s about what kind of party AAP is becoming, and whether it can survive the contradictions it’s built up over the past few years.
AAP was founded on the idea of being different. Less hierarchical. More transparent. Driven by public interest rather than political convenience. But the pattern emerging in 2026 looks nothing like those founding principles.
- Two senior Rajya Sabha exits in one year: First Swati Maliwal fell out publicly with the leadership, and now this mass exodus. That’s not bad luck. That’s a structural problem with how the party manages dissent.
- The blocking of Chadha’s speaking time was unprecedented: Writing to the Secretariat to block your own MP from speaking in Parliament is an extreme disciplinary step. Whether Chadha deserved it or not, it signals a party that treats internal disagreement as an existential threat rather than a normal part of political life.
- Punjab is the real prize and the real risk: AAP governs Punjab, but its Rajya Sabha presence from the state has been decimated. The narrative that AAP mismanages its own internal politics is now a BJP talking point with real evidence behind it.
- BJP has been strategic: Whether you believe it was entirely BJP’s doing or genuinely organic dissatisfaction — the result is the same. BJP now has credible, media-savvy defectors from AAP who can speak to voters in Delhi and Punjab with insider knowledge of the rival party’s failures.
For all the drama and dark humour in how this unfolded, the political implications are actually quite serious. AAP goes into Punjab elections with a weakened upper house presence, a split in its senior leadership, and a narrative of internal dysfunction that opponents will exploit relentlessly.
Final Word:
From Deputy Leader to BJP Member in 23 Days
Indian politics doesn’t usually come with this much dark comedy baked in. But here we are.
For AAP, the question now isn’t about damage control — it’s about survival strategy. Sanjay Singh and his two remaining colleagues in the Rajya Sabha are about to do a lot of heavy lifting. For Raghav Chadha, the real test begins now: whether his new political home in the BJP actually gives him the platform he says he was denied in AAP, or whether this is just a new chapter of the same old story.
Seven exits. Three holdouts. One very long press conference. And a party wondering how it got here.
Breaking — April 25, 2026
