AAP Rajya Sabha Split: Who Are the 7 MPs Who Joined BJP and 3 Who Stayed

When Raghav Chadha walked out of AAP on April 24, he did not walk alone. North Desk profiles all ten of AAP’s Rajya Sabha MPs — the seven who crossed to BJP and the three who held the fort.

By Arvind Chhabra

Chandigarh, April 25

On the morning of April 24, 2026, seven members of the Rajya Sabha walked into a press conference in New Delhi and walked out of the Aam Aadmi Party. Together they claimed to represent two-thirds of AAP’s strength in the Upper House — the precise constitutional threshold needed to invoke a merger rather than a defection, sidestepping disqualification under the anti-defection law. The arithmetic was deliberate. The optics were devastating.

The ten people who held AAP’s Rajya Sabha seats were never a homogeneous group. They were a cricketer, a chancellor, a sweets shop heir turned education mogul, a Sufi-singing philanthropist, a Cambridge-educated scientist, a chartered accountant, a whistleblower, a linen-and-chemicals industrialist, a social activist, and a veteran environmentalist. What brought them together was Arvind Kejriwal. What tore them apart may ultimately be a question about whether a movement — and its leader — can survive power.

North Desk profiles all ten: the seven who crossed over and the three who held the fort.

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THE SEVEN WHO LEFT

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1 RAGHAV CHADHA

The Strategist

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

At 37, Raghav Chadha was the face AAP could put on a billboard — young, articulate, telegenic, and married to actress Parineeti Chopra in a wedding that felt almost like a state event. A chartered accountant by training, he served as a Delhi MLA and was the public voice of AAP’s Punjab campaign before being sent to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab in 2022. He later served as the party’s deputy leader in the Upper House.

His removal from that post in April 2026 — the proximate trigger of the split — was framed by him as “wounding.” His parting words at the press conference — “I am the right man in the wrong party” — landed as the most quotable line of a very quotable morning. He was joined in the announcement by six others, but there was little doubt about who had choreographed the moment.

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2. SANDEEP PATHAK

The Architect

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

If Raghav Chadha was AAP’s face, Sandeep Pathak was its spine. Born to farming parents in Mungeli, Chhattisgarh, he built one of the most improbable CVs in Indian politics: a PhD from the University of Cambridge in high-temperature superconducting materials, post-doctoral research at Oxford and MIT, a faculty position at IIT Delhi — and then, almost inexplicably, a second career as a political organiser.

As AAP’s National General Secretary (Organisation), he built the party machinery that swept Punjab in 2022, managing operations across Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Punjab simultaneously. He was sent to the Rajya Sabha as a reward for that Punjab win. His exit alongside Chadha signals that this is not merely a personal rift but a deep organisational fracture — the man who built the machine has now walked away from it.

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3. ASHOK MITTAL

The Chancellor

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

The most layered story among the seven. Born in Jalandhar Cantonment into a Rajasthani business family, Mittal grew up around his father Baldev Raj Mittal’s sweets shop — a well-known local establishment especially famous for its motichoor ke laddu. A law graduate from Guru Nanak Dev University, he initially worked in the family business alongside brothers Naresh and Ramesh before transforming that modest inheritance into Lovely Professional University, now one of India’s largest private universities with a sprawling campus on the Jalandhar-Delhi highway.

He entered the Rajya Sabha in 2022 as an AAP nominee from Punjab. Then, in rapid succession in April 2026: the Enforcement Directorate raided his business entities as part of a FEMA probe; he was appointed Deputy Leader of AAP in the Rajya Sabha, replacing Chadha himself; and within ten days of that ED raid, he walked out of AAP and into the BJP. The sequence of events raised pointed questions that neither he nor his new party appeared keen to answer at the press conference.

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4. HARBHAJAN SINGH

The Turbanator

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

Few names carry the weight in Punjab that Harbhajan Singh’s does — not for politics, but for sport. The off-spinner from Jalandhar who dismantled Australia at the 2001 Kolkata Test with a hat-trick, who finished his Test career with 417 wickets, who was simply “Bhajji” to an entire generation of Indian cricket fans.

AAP brought him into the Rajya Sabha in 2022 as a cultural statement: that the party was Punjab, and Punjab was them. His political record in the Upper House was limited — he rarely led debates — but his name on a letterhead had its own gravity. His decision to cross over to the BJP surprised fewer people than it might once have; he had grown visibly distant from the party’s inner circles in the months before the split.

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5. RAJINDER GUPTA

The Linen King

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

The chairman emeritus of Trident Group — one of India’s largest textiles and paper conglomerates, headquartered in Barnala, Punjab — Rajinder Gupta brought to AAP’s Rajya Sabha bench the rare credibility of serious industrial capital. Trident, known globally for its bed linen and towels, represents Punjab’s manufacturing identity in a way that goes well beyond politics.

Gupta’s long association with the Confederation of Indian Industry gave him a footprint in policy circles well before his 2022 Rajya Sabha nomination by AAP. His exit to BJP is broadly unsurprising — industrialists of his profile have generally found the BJP’s economic orientation more comfortable — but his presence in AAP’s ranks had always been something of an outlier, even within the party.

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6. VIKRAMJIT SINGH SAHNEY

The Global Sikh

Rajya Sabha (2022-)

Born in Kotkapura in 1962, Vikramjit Singh Sahney built the Sun Group — a fertilisers and chemicals trading conglomerate — into a platform for something that went well beyond business. A Padma Shri awardee, former Honorary Consul General of South Africa, former president of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, and chair of the BRICS Agri Business Forum, Sahney operated at a level of international access that was unusual for a regional MP.

His Sun Foundation evacuated over 500 Afghan Hindus and Sikhs after the Taliban takeover by chartering three flights — an act that generated headlines across the diaspora. He writes poetry, sings Sufi songs, and has authored books on Punjab’s heritage including Jewels of Punjab. His crossing to BJP removes from AAP a figure who represented Punjabi diaspora credibility in ways the party cannot easily replace.

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7. SWATI MALIWAL

The Whistleblower

Rajya Sabha (2024-)

Of the seven, Swati Maliwal has the most combustible recent history with the party she has now left. As chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, she was one of AAP’s most visible faces on women’s rights and survivor advocacy. She was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2024 — the most recent entrant among the seven.

But within months of taking her seat, she made headlines for a very different reason — alleging that she was assaulted at the Chief Minister’s official residence by a close aide of Arvind Kejriwal. The accusation shook the party to its foundations, led to protracted legal proceedings, and created an irreparable personal fracture. Her formalising that break by joining BJP on April 24 is less a sudden political calculation and more the official conclusion of a separation that had already happened in practice.

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THE THREE WHO STAYED

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8. SANJAY SINGH

The Loyalist

Rajya Sabha, Delhi

Of the three who held the line, Sanjay Singh is the most combative. An AAP Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi, he has led the party’s floor battles during its most punishing years — including Kejriwal’s arrest — with a consistency and public aggression that few in the party match. He is among the most trusted voices in the inner circle. His staying is not a surprise; it would have been the real story had he gone.

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9. SANT BALBIR SINGH SEECHEWAL

The River Saint

Rajya Sabha, Punjab (2022-)

Seechewal is perhaps the most distinctive figure in this entire list — and perhaps the least political. A revered figure across Punjab’s rural landscape, he became nationally known for personally leading the cleanup of the Kali Bein rivulet in Doaba over several years, mobilising thousands of volunteers without government support. That act of environmental seva gave him a moral authority that transcended party lines entirely.

AAP brought him in as a symbol of grassroots service. His loyalty to the party is likely rooted less in ideology and more in a personal alignment with Kejriwal’s original anti-corruption, service-first message — the version of AAP that existed before power complicated everything.

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10. NARAIN DASS GUPTA

The Accountant

Rajya Sabha, (2018-, Second Term)

At 80, N.D. Gupta is the elder statesman of the three who remained — and arguably the one with the deepest institutional roots. A B.Com from Shri Ram College of Commerce and a CA who topped his examinations, he became president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and the first Indian elected to the board of the International Federation of Accountants in the United States. He is widely regarded across party lines as India’s foremost expert on GST.

AAP brought him in as their financial conscience — the man who helped the party navigate relentless Income Tax department notices and maintained, by all accounts, impeccable books. He is now in his second Rajya Sabha term. His staying is consistent with a man who has spent his career building things quietly and does not easily walk away from commitments.

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Ten people. One party, now reduced to a rump of three in the Rajya Sabha. The seven who left took with them a cricketer’s crowd-pull, a scientist’s organisational genius, a chancellor’s institutional weight, a linen king’s industrial credibility, a global Sikh’s diaspora reach, a philanthropist’s moral optics, and a whistleblower’s media heat.

Bikram Singh Majithia of the Akali Dal has already predicted that AAP MLAs in Punjab will follow — naming Jalandhar and Ludhiana as the starting points. Whether or not that comes to pass, the departure of seven Rajya Sabha MPs has done something more immediate: it has handed AAP’s opponents a narrative of collapse just as the party begins its campaign for the 2027 Punjab assembly elections, the only state it still governs.

The numbers in the Rajya Sabha may be procedural. The signal they send to Punjab is anything but.