Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has requested a meeting with President Draupadi Murmu, as seven Rajya Sabha MPs have quit Aam Aadmi Party and joined the BJP.
The Chief Minister will be presenting his party's stand regarding the "recall" of Rajya Sabha members. Notably, six out of seven RS MPs who have defected are from Punjab.
On Friday, AAP Rajya Sabha members Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak announced that they were quitting the party and joining the BJP along with five other MPs. Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Swati Maliwal, and Vikramjit Sahney were the other AAP MPs they named.
Chadha alleged that the Arvind Kejriwal-led party had strayed from its principles, values and core morals, which is why he was joining the BJP.
He said the seven had merged with the BJP as a faction. In the immediate wake of the exodus, Mann accused the BJP of trying to break the Aam Aadmi Party and the leaders of betraying the people of Punjab.
Mann claimed that ever since a strict law against 'beadbi' (sacrilege) was enacted, the BJP's unease had become evident. He also said none of the seven RS members was a mass leader.
"Even a 'sarpanch' has a vote bank. Do they have any vote bank?" he asked.
Mann said that the BJP, which has repeatedly faced rejection in Punjab, has responded with hostility towards both the state and the Aam Aadmi Party, attempting to weaken a corruption-free government through intimidation, inducements, and engineering defections.
He asserted that the BJP's lack of political ground in the state has pushed it towards such tactics, and that the party was unsettled by visible improvements in schools, hospitals, roads, and the employment scene.
At present, the AAP has 94 MLAs out of a total of 117 members of the Assembly in Punjab.
With inputs from PTI
