Chandigarh : In another setback to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ahead of the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections, Amritsar North MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh has resigned from the Punjab Legislative Assembly with immediate effect.
The former IPS officer took to social media to announce his decision and address his constituents, claiming that he had achieved 90 per cent of the targets he had set as a legislator.
“My biggest achievement is that I ended the Mai Baap culture in politics and worked by considering the public as my source of inspiration,” he said.
Calling for a collective effort to transform Punjab, he said the state was grappling with drugs, extortion, gangsterism and corruption and needed to regain its progressive identity.
Kunwar said he had consistently raised issues concerning Amritsar in the Punjab Legislative Assembly, ranging from water supply and sewage to the Circuit House, Company Bagh, dirty drains, Guru Nanak Dev University, Government Medical College, Saroop Rani College and the Bargari sacrilege case.
“This was the first time that area-specific issues were raised by me in the Punjab Legislative Assembly by naming lanes and neighbourhoods,” he said.
Stating that his future political efforts would focus on clean politics and transparent administration, he added, “My sole purpose is ‘Punjab First’. Apart from this, I will have no personal interests.”
Kunwar has submitted his resignation to the Speaker of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha, becoming the third AAP legislator to quit in less than 24 hours.
His resignation comes a day after Samana MLA Chetan Singh Jouramajra and Sanaur MLA Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra resigned from the party’s primary membership.
The three are likely to join the BJP on Monday.
Interestingly, the AAP had officially announced this morning that both Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra and Chetan Singh Jouramajra had been suspended from the party for anti-party activities, even before they resigned.
The party also said, “The Aam Aadmi Party will urge the Assembly Speaker to cancel the membership of both MLAs.”
The developments follow AAP’s announcement of its first list of candidates for the 2027 Assembly elections on November 1. The party had recently appointed halqa in-charges in the constituencies represented by Jouramajra and Pathanmajra, fuelling speculation that the two sitting MLAs might not be renominated.
The AAP leadership had earlier accused the BJP of trying to strengthen its position in Punjab by inducting leaders rejected by other parties, maintaining that the saffron party had little political base in the state.
A former IPS officer, Kunwar Vijay Pratap joined AAP after resigning from the police service. He was associated with the investigations into the 2015 sacrilege incidents in Faridkot and the subsequent police firing cases in Punjab.
He entered electoral politics with AAP and won the Amritsar North Assembly seat in the 2022 elections.
However, his relations with the party leadership subsequently deteriorated. He publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the party’s functioning and its handling of issues related to the sacrilege cases. His differences with the leadership eventually led to his suspension from the party.
