The BJP strengthened its position in the upper House of Parliament after Rajya Sabha chairman C.P. Radhakrishnan on Monday officially accepted the merger of seven AAP members with the BJP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party now has 113 members, 10 short of a simple majority in the 245-member Rajya Sabha. The BJP-led NDA holds about 140 seats in the House. AAP has been left with three members.
Rajya Sabha members are elected for six-year terms by elected members of state legislatures and Union Territories with legislatures, using a proportional representation system. The NDA rules 19 of India’s 28 states and two the three Union Territories with Assemblies.
Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Sandeep Pathak, Vikramjit Sahney, Swati Maliwal and Rajinder Gupta are the seven MPs who merged with the BJP. The Rajya Sabha website on Monday showed that the seven MPs are part of the BJP list of members.
Of the total seven MPs representing Punjab in Rajya Sabha, six are with the BJP and only one remains with AAP.
In Delhi, of the total three Rajya Sabha MPs two remain with the AAP and one with the BJP. Sanjay Singh and N.D. Gupta (both AAP) and Swati Maliwal (BJP) represent Delhi in Rajya Sabha.
The seven MPs petitioned the Rajya Sabha Chairman on Friday to be treated as BJP MPs after the merger and the petition has been accepted, PTI reported quoting sources.
Union parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju welcomed the seven MPs into the NDA and said they have bid goodbye to the "Tukde-Tukde INDI Alliance".
"Honb'le Chairman Rajya Sabha Shri C.P. Radhakrishnan Ji has accepted the merger of 7 AAP MPs with BJP. Now, Raghav Chadha ji, Sandeep Pathak ji, Ashok Mittal ji, Harbhajan Singh ji, Swati Maliwal ji, Rajinder Gupta ji and Vikramjit Singh Sahney ji are Members of BJP Parliamentary Party," Rijiju wrote on X.
"For a long time I've observed that these 7 Honb'le MPs have not resorted to abusive languages and never created any indiscipline and Un-Parliamentary conducts," Rijiju said in a post on X.
"Welcome to nation building NDA under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji and good bye to Tukde-Tukde INDI Alliance," the minister said.
The AAP had earlier on Sunday termed their merger as "unconstitutional" and said they have moved a petition before the Rajya Sabha chairman seeking the termination of the membership of the seven who switched sides.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh had said that he had submitted a petition to Radhakrishnan seeking the disqualification of the seven party MPs in the Upper House.
Amid questions over his decision to quit AAP, Chadha on Monday said the work environment in Arvind Kejriwal's party had turned "toxic" with leaders stopped from working, and asserted that "one or two persons can be wrong, but not all seven".
In a video on social media, Chadha said he had been receiving several messages over the last three days, with many people congratulating him while others wanted to know the reasons behind his decision.
He said he left a successful career as a practising chartered accountant to enter politics and became a founding member of AAP, giving 15 years of his "prime youth" to build the party.
"I didn't come into politics to make my career," he said, adding that he had worked for the party with his "blood, sweat and tears."
However, he alleged that the party was no longer the same and had turned into a "toxic work environment", where leaders were stopped from working and speaking in Parliament.
"Today, this political party is trapped in the hands of some corrupt and compromised people. They don't work for the country but for their own personal gain," Chadha alleged.