Raghav Chadha, Other MPs Who Came From AAP Get Key BJP Committee Roles For Punjab Polls

Raghav Chadha, who led a breakaway group of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in April, has been named to the Punjab BJP's manifesto committee for the 2027 assembly elections. Five other Rajya Sabha MPs who quit AAP with him have been placed on the party's manifesto and chargesheet committees.

Punjab BJP president Kewal Singh Dhillon formed the two state-level committees, according to a press statement from the party office. Dhillon said more committees would be announced in the coming days.

Former state BJP president and ex-MP Avinash Rai Khanna will chair the manifesto committee. Its 12 other members are Manpreet Singh Badal, Ashwani Sharma, Manoranjan Kalia, Som Parkash, Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi, Ashwani Sekhri, Satnam Singh Sandhu, Raghav Chadha, Rajinder Gupta, Harbhajan Singh, Parampal Kaur and HS Phoolka.

READ | Punjab Congress Forms Fail-Safe Panel To Induct Turncoats Ahead Of Polls

Kewal Dhillon's predecessor as state unit chief, former MP Sunil Jakhar, will chair the chargesheet committee. Its 13 other members are Iqbal Singh Lalpura, Vijay Sampla, Shwait Malik, Preneet Kaur, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Dinesh Babbu, Sushil Rinku, Gejja Ram, Vikramjit Singh Sahney, Ashok Mittal, Sandeep Pathak, SS Channi and Jagmeet Singh Brar.

Three of the AAP defectors -- the Arvind Kejriwal-led party's founding member Raghav Chadha, who was an MLA in Delhi before going to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab; industrialist Rajinder Gupta; and ex-cricketer Harbhajan Singh -- are on the manifesto committee. AAP's former Punjab strategist Sandeep Pathak, and businessmen Ashok Mittal and Vikramjit Singh Sahney are on the chargesheet committee, the panel set up to put together the BJP's case against the AAP government in Punjab. The defector group also included Swati Maliwal, who is a Rajya Sabha member from Delhi.

Raghav Chadha, who comes from a Delhi-based Punjabi family and was earlier accused of being "Super CM" controlling Bhagwant Mann's AAP government in Punjab, joined the BJP in April in the presence of BJP national president Nitin Nabin at the party headquarters in New Delhi. Pathak and Mittal joined that day too, while the rest followed. Because the group made up two-thirds of the party's strength in the House, it argued it could merge with the BJP under the anti-defection law without losing its seats, though the AAP continues to pursue challenges to that. The AAP was thus left with only three of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs: the party's senior founding leader Sanjay Singh, businessman ND Gupta and environmentalist-cum-spritual leader Balbir Singh Seechewal, the last one of those being its only remaining Rajya Sabha member from Punjab. Sanjay Singh said at the time that he would ask the Rajya Sabha chairman to disqualify Chadha, Mittal and Pathak for joining the BJP.

READ | 'Doors Closed For Congress': Sunil Jakhar Dismisses Return Rumours

Sushil Rinku, who is on the chargesheet committee, also came to the BJP from AAP, and was in the Congress before that. He was AAP's Jalandhar Lok Sabha MP before he switched in March 2024. Several other members of both committees joined the BJP from the Congress, including former state Congress chief Sunil Kumar Jakhar, whose family was with that party for over four decades; former Punjab finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who was earlier with his uncle Parkash Singh Badal's Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD); and former central minister Ravneet Singh Bittu, whose grandfather Beant Singh was a Congress chief minister; besides former central minister Preneet Kaur, whose husband Capt Amarinder Singh is a two-time former chief minister, and former state minister Rana Gurmit Singh Sodhi.

Dhillon, a former Congress MLA from Barnala, was appointed Punjab BJP president on May 28, replacing Jakhar. A top business owner, Dhillon joined the BJP in June 2022, after the AAP won 92 of the 117 seats in the Punjab assembly elections that year.

The next assembly elections are due in early 2027.

The BJP, which had been saying it would contest all 117 seats on its own, is learnt to be in talks with the Shiromani Akali Dal to revive the alliance, though this time it wants more seats while remaining the junior partner.