New Delhi: A day after seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha members crossed over to the BJP, the party’s Punjab Chief Minister, Bhagwant Singh Mann, has sought a meeting with President Droupadi Murmu to press for the “removal” of the seven members from the Rajya Sabha, said AAP sources.
Sources said Mann would be accompanied by the party’s MLAs in Punjab. “He is likely to tell the President that these members were elected by AAP MLAs, and each AAP MLA is elected by 2.5 lakh people in each constituency. Hence, their move to the BJP is not in line with the people’s mandate. For now, we are waiting for an appointment with the President,”
Six of the seven who crossed over to the BJP were sent to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab: Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta and Vikramjit Sahney. The seventh, Swati Maliwal, was sent from Delhi.
Mann’s move to meet the President is being seen as a show of political strength. It comes amid growing unease within the party ranks over possible attempts by the BJP to expand its footprint in Punjab through defections, ahead of the Assembly elections early next year.
His move to take the party’s MLAs with him aims to send a clear message — that they are firmly behind the party leadership.
Sources said the show of strength may be largely symbolic, but remains politically significant. At a time when Opposition parties have accused the BJP of engineering defections in non-BJP-ruled states, Mann’s strategy appears focused on pre-empting such developments in Punjab.
AAP’s three in Lok Sabha:
Now the spotlight shifted to the Aam Aadmi Party’s three members in Lok Sabha — all elected from Punjab. While one of the AAP’s Lok Sabha members, Malvinder Singh Kang from Anandpur Sahib, has struck a discordant note, saying the party structure has become skewed and calling for better coordination between the party leadership and its MPs, MLAs and ministers in Punjab, the other two — Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer from Sangrur and Raj Kumar Chabbewal from Hoshiarpur — told The Indian Express on Saturday that they were “not going anywhere”.
“The three MPs are being watched. As we have only three of them, the vertical division requires only two people to quit,” said a party source.
Kang has said that the party gave “too much power” to Chadha in Punjab, leading to centralised decision-making. He has also alleged that Pathak, the party’s strategist ahead of the 2022 Assembly elections, was neglected. According to Kang, Pathak told him that “nobody had contacted him in the last one year”.
Speaking to The Indian Express on Saturday, Chabbewal said: “There may be a buzz, but I am not going anywhere. I am happy in AAP. Whatever I seek for my constituency is done. There is no interference. Why would I switch to BJP? Look what they did to Capt Amarinder Singh. Where is Sunil Jakhar now? As Capt Amarinder says, BJP does not give importance to anyone, so why would anyone join them? I even got a call from the Chief Minister’s OSD yesterday, but it was not about this. It was regarding some work in my constituency.”
“I am a committed soldier of the party. I am with the party, will stay in the party. People will never forgive those leaders who ditched them. I am committed,” said Meet Hayer.
Kang, who rose from student politics, was with the BJP earlier, before resigning in 2020 to protest against the farm laws. He joined AAP in 2021, became the party’s chief spokesperson, and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Anandpur Sahib in 2024. He has occasionally taken positions at variance with the party line, including opposing the government’s land-pooling policy, which was later scrapped, and publicly raising concerns over alleged illegal mining under AAP rule.
Chabbewal, a doctor by profession, was earlier a Congress MLA. He joined the AAP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024, and won from Hoshiarpur (SC-reserved) constituency.
Meet Hayer was elected twice as an MLA on an AAP ticket — in 2017 and 2022 — before being fielded for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Sangrur, a seat earlier represented by Mann. A former president of the AAP’s youth wing, he is considered close to the party’s Delhi leadership.
Meanwhile, party sources pointed to the silence of the AAP’s Punjab president, Aman Arora, on the issue. While Arora put out a post on X on Friday, accusing the Rajya Sabha members of “breaking their trust”, he hasn’t spoken our publicly on the issue.
“His silence has now become politically significant. A state president is not merely an organisational functionary; he is the face of the party’s narrative in the state. At a moment of visible internal churn, his absence from the frontline of communication has only added to the speculation around AAP’s cohesion in Punjab,” said a party leader.
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