For a mid-sized party that earned its place in Indian political chronicles by claiming and retaining Delhi in the 2015 and 2020 Assembly elections, though it was left battered after an ignominious defeat in 2025, the Aam Aadmi Party never disappears from the news cycle. Its survival now depends on its Punjab government, while it nurtures a small presence in the Gujarat, Goa and J&K assemblies.
The AAP’s record does not portend the prospect of being a force to reckon with at the Centre in the foreseeable future. But nothing stops the party from dreaming big. No sooner was AAP chieftain Arvind Kejriwal legally exonerated in the excise policy case that cost him a third victory in Delhi, than his cheerleaders proclaimed him as a prospective Prime Minister.
After drawing local big-shots from opponents like the Congress, the AAP got a taste of its own medicine once it ceded power in Delhi. It lost former ministers Raaj Kumar Anand and Kailash Gahlot to the BJP, while Alka Lamba, one of the national capital’s best-known women politicians, returned to the Congress.
However, the recent exclusion of Raghav Chadha from the innards of power drew more reactions—both negative and favourable towards the newsmaker—than the other departures, although Kejriwal has not yet suspended Chadha from the party. He seems set to quit as he lobs a provocation a day at his leader.
Last week, Chadha was stripped of his post as the AAP’s Rajya Sabha deputy leader with a communiqué to the secretariat not to allocate him time to speak. It was as if lifelines sustaining his political career were cut off, leaving him with a token presence in the party and Parliament.
Chadha, a 37-year-old chartered accountant, started as a Kejriwal favourite. Dapper and eloquent, he spoke the language of a quintessential upper-middle-class urbanite without the cynicism of someone tired of the existing system. The patina of earnestness he exuded persuaded even politics-weary citizens to believe that a vote for AAP would bring them ‘achchhe din’.
Chadha was no political spring chicken. He quickly grasped and nearly perfected the AAP’s operative dynamics and maintained Kejriwal’s trust to become a key trouble-shooter in Punjab after the party was elected to rule, and was crucial to selecting candidates, finessing the campaign and sorting out organisational glitches. Before the 2022 polls, there was a buzz that Chadha could be the Chief Minister if AAP was voted to power. Even as Bhagwant Mann made it to the top job, Chadha leveraged his clout to a degree that he was feared as an extra-constitutional authority to Mann’s chagrin.
The growing antagonism towards Chadha didn’t bother his mentor Kejriwal, who in 2022 had him appointed as an advisor to the Punjab government. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha from the state and was additionally rewarded with the post of the AAP’s deputy leader in the Upper House, with the hope he would assail the ruling NDA coalition and flag issues close to his party’s agenda.
He didn’t work to fulfill Kejriwal’s expectations. Apparently, the trigger for Chadha’s creeping indifference towards the AAP was Kejriwal’s arrest in March 2024 in the excise scam along with senior Delhi ministers Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain. Chadha’s name figured in supplementary charges filed by the Enforcement Directorate, but he was not named as an accused or a suspect. AAP insiders believed that the mention was enough to put the fear of god in Chadha.
He started to distance himself. He did not campaign enthusiastically in the Delhi elections. When AAP leaders and workers were out on the streets protesting the arrest of Kejriwal and other colleagues, Chadha went missing. His plea was that he was in London for a vitrectomy. However, even when back in Delhi, he did not partake of the celebrations after the corruption charges against Kejriwal and others were dropped.
In Parliament, he was considered more a liability than an asset to the AAP. The grouse was that Chadha never participated in opposition walkouts, never raised questions against the Modi government and, importantly, never took up Punjab-related matters despite representing the state. He was accused of indulging in “soft public relations”, which when parsed meant speaking on issues the treasury benches would readily endorse.
So, when Chadha pleaded that he was brought down for “speaking for the people”, his colleagues’ retort was he was more concerned with the high price of samosas selling at airport restaurants than the deletion of bona fide voters from electoral rolls. The “samosa” became a metaphor for Chadha’s levity in a serious forum like the Rajya Sabha. What was unexceptionable to him was unacceptable to the AAP—adopting “neutrality” and “playing safe” in politically fraught times. A day after the first round of actions against him, he deleted posts attacking Modi from his X account. He invited ridicule from his colleagues, who reminded him that an individual who takes fright might as well be dead.
One of Chadha’s recent Instagram post says, “Never outshine your master”. Although described as cryptic by observers, it was crystal clear that he intended to portray himself as a ‘victim’ for displaying ‘talent’. The undertone suggested that his ‘master’ Kejriwal was insecure because he, Chadha, appeared more brilliant.
Sadly, Chadha’s purported brilliance and talent were rarely, if ever, on display. When he was given space in Punjab, like any politician, he tried to put his new skills at realpolitik to use and did not succeed. In Parliament, his anxiety over excessive baggage charges, flight delays and legalising paternity leave—legitimate issues by themselves—would have endeared him to the classes rather than the masses who are losing sleep over LPG shortage.
For someone who supposedly had a great rapport with Kejriwal, Chadha must have known early on that he served a leader who, like anyone in his role, was essentially ruthless and subscribed to an off-with-the-head credo to reinforce his supremacy. At the peak of the AAP’s popularity and strength, Kejriwal rid himself of several founding members such as Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, indisputably wiser and more talented than Chadha. The AAP survived the vicissitudes.
By comparison, Chadha might be small change useful to the BJP and the Congress—only to the extent of disparaging Kejriwal and spilling the beans on AAP, like some of Rahul Gandhi’s former confidants are to the BJP.
Radhika Ramaseshan | Columnist and political commentator
(Views are personal)