Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha left the Aam Aadmi Party along with six other MPs from the party and merged with the BJP in a major shake-up for Arvind Kejriwal’s party.
Seven of AAP’s 10 MPs in the Rajya Sabha, most of them from Punjab, have left the party to merge with the BJP. The number (two-thirds of the total strength) also ensures that party members maintain their membership in the Senate.
While talking about the move behind AAP’s exit, Raghav Chadha said, “Main unke gunaah me shamil nahi hona chahta tha (I hated to be isolated from their sins).”
“We did not enter politics to make a career, but we left our career to enter politics for the nation. If the party (AAP) is not working for the nation, it is because the Aam Aadmi Party is not the old Aam Aadmi Party,” Raghav Chadha said at the press conference.
The former AAP leader also detailed his reasons for staying away from party activities, which eventually ended in a row.
“Since the last few years, some of you have been asking: ‘Raghav ji, why did you maintain a distance from party activities. I wasn’t used to saying anything then. I was trying to make things better. But I’ll tell you the real reason today. The reason is that “Mai unki gunah li shamil nahi hona chahta tha. Mai unki dosti ki meet nahi tha, kiwi mai unki gunah mi shamil nahi tha“(I didn’t want to be apart of their sins. I didn’t deserve their friendship because I wasn’t part of their sins.)” he said.
The Aam Aadmi Party responded to the move, calling it a “betrayal” of the people of Punjab and an attack on the Bhagwant Mann government.
“BJP has come back to Punjab again,” Kejriwal wrote, in a post on
