AAP MP Raghav Chadha took a dig at his own party, with which he had recently fallen out publicly, when he rose to speak in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
“The leader of the party I belong to is not in the House,” he said, apparently referring to RJD leader Sanjay Singh.
He added, “The deputy leader of the party to which I recently belong is not present in the council either.” He added, referring to Ashok Kumar Mittal, an industrialist politician and member of Punjab like Chaddha.
Speaking while congratulating Harivansh Narayan Singh for his unopposed re-election as Deputy Speaker of the Upper House of Parliament for a third term on April 17, Chadha said: “I am the deputy leader who was recently removed, and I am present in the House. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak.”
What Raghav Chadha said
Chadha, speaking in Hindi, congratulated Harivansh but added that his personal equation with the Vice-President of the Socialist Revolutionaries remained ‘khata-mitha’ (sweet-sour, or hot-knock-cold-knock),’
“I hope it doesn’t turn out to be that way this semester and actually turns into a ‘sweet’ relationship,” he added, saying he hopes to get an extra minute or two to talk as well in the future.
He also paid tribute to the Republika Srpska President, Vice President of India C P Radhakrishnan, who was in the chair. He said, “Since you became president, a lot of members are getting time to speak. Earlier during zero hour, only 5-6 members could speak; 15-20 members did not get the opportunity. Hence, congratulations to you as well.”
Read also | Raghav Chadha reads about ‘Power’. Will he go to the BJP, what about the RSP seat?
Why make fun of at a private party?
Raghav Chadha this month went from being the Aam Aadmi Party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha to the most publicly attacked MP – stripped of his position, barred from speaking in Parliament from the party’s quota; His colleagues accused him of being a “compromiser” and of being in league with the Centre’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Meanwhile, Chadha presented a book on “The Laws of Power.”
The revelation of the fallout came with AAP’s letter to the Rajya Sabha Secretariat on April 2, replacing Chadha as deputy leader of the party in the upper house of Parliament with fellow Punjab MP, industrialist Ashok Mittal.
The party has 10 members in the Rajya Sabha, seven from Punjab and three from Delhi. In the Lok Sabha, there are three MPs, all from Punjab.
Chadha, 37, responded on the same day. “Don’t think that my silence is my defeat.” He said in a video posted on X. By April 6, he was sending apparently clear messages to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal and the leadership.
“Someone gifted me a book this week… I turned to the first chapter – ‘Never Outsmart Your Professor’. Some books arrive exactly on time,” he wrote on Instagram. Book: “The Forty-Eight Laws of Power” by the American writer Robert Greene.
His party’s senior leaders were also fighters.
Delhi AAP president Saurabh Bharadwaj Chadha has been accused of doing “soft PR” or public relations/propaganda in Parliament by raising less visible issues like food prices at airports and express trade delivery schedules, rather than confronting the BJP-led central government on harder political ground.
“Since a small party has a very limited time in Parliament, if someone raises the samosa issue during that period, it is important to raise the bigger issues for the country,” Bharadwaj said.
Chief Minister of Punjab Bhagwant Mann, where Chadda is an MP, responded directly on whether Chadda had been “compromised”. He said emphatically: “Yes!”
“If there is a partisan stance on any issue, like in Gujarat where cases were registered against 160 AAP volunteers; instead of talking about those issues, if someone raises issues related to samosa prices, pizza delivery, wouldn’t you suspect that the person is talking from another side, or from another station?” said Mann, the comedian-turned-politician.
Atishi, the former Delhi chief minister, cited specific acts of omission in Chadha’s record. It said Chad refused to sign an impeachment memorandum against Chief Election Commissioner Ganesh Kumar — an opposition initiative supported by several parties — and did not raise the issue of LPG shortages even when the party requested it amid the US-Iran war and the West Asia oil crisis.
Chadha denied all allegations. He said: “I challenge you to mention even one case when the opposition decided to withdraw and I did not support it.”
Regarding non-signing of the impeachment motion, he said: “Only 50 signatures were required out of 105 opposition MPs in the Senate. When six or seven AAP MPs did not sign, why should I be singled out?” He did not mention the names of these AAP MPs.
He described the entire AAP attack on him as “scripted”.
