Slew of AAP leaders, including MLA and councillor, join BJP

New Delhi

Kartar Singh Tanwar, Chhatarpur MLA of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Raaj Kumar Anand, former Delhi minister and ex-AAP Patel Nagar MLA, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday, striking a blow to the AAP ahead of next year’s state assembly elections.

The duo were inducted into the party by national general secretary Arun Singh, at a press conference at the BJP’s national headquarters on DDU Marg, Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva said.

Tanwar is a two-time MLA from Chhatarpur, where he won in 2015 and 2020. He joined the AAP from BJP in 2014, and his return was termed a “homecoming” by BJP leaders.

Anand, a former social welfare minister in the Delhi government, was disqualified from the assembly on June 14, five weeks after he joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and contested the Lok Sabha elections from the New Delhi constituency. He was elected the MLA of Patel Nagar constituency, a reserved seat, on an AAP ticket.

Anand’s wife Veena Anand, who was elected Patel Nagar MLA in 2013 on an AAP ticket, also joined the BJP’s ranks.

Besides the trio, AAP’s Said-Ul-Ajaib councillor Umed Singh Phogat, and AAP members Ratnesh Gupta and Sachin Rai also joined the BJP.

“AAP leaders have joined the BJP after being inspired by the leadership and work of PM Narendra Modi and also because working in the AAP is similar to working under a dictatorship. The corruption is at peak in the AAP… all of them have taken the membership of the BJP and we welcome everyone into the party,” Sachdeva said.

Anand said it was a “day of pride” for him to join “the world’s largest party” and thanked PM Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda. “My purpose of joining the BJP is to connect the vision of Modi ji with the people of Delhi. After I became a minister in Delhi, I found that Arvind Kejriwal was not interested in working for the Dalits. I couldn’t tolerate this, so I resigned,” Anand said.

Tanwar said: “For the past 20 to 25 years, I have been working for social welfare. In the past two years, Delhi has deteriorated and AAP government has been completely engulfed in corruption. It was unimaginable because AAP was founded to eliminate corruption. Today, we are unable to do anything due to the style of the functioning of the government. For the last three months instead of work the game of blame game is going on.”

The development comes as a blow to the AAP in Delhi, which is expected to go to polls in January or February 2025, given that the party’s top leaders, including Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, are in jail over corruption charges.

However, Delhi AAP minister Saurabh Bharadwaj said the BJP is suppressing opposition parties and trying to weaken them by poaching their leaders. He said Anand was joining the BJP as he was facing a probe of money laundering.

“The 2024 Lok Sabha elections showed that despite the attempts of the BJP, opposition only got strengthened. Attempts are being made to threaten our MLAs, and some of them do come under pressure,” Bharadwaj said, at a press conference at the AAP headquarters.

“Kartar Singh Tanwar was my colleague till a few hours ago. I believe that the BJP has muddied the politics so much that they can arm twist anyone into doing anything. Everyone knows that in 2016, I-T raids were conducted at his (Tanwar) residence and the BJP’s I-T department claimed that unaccounted cash worth ₹130 crore was found. The sword is hanging on his head,” Bharadwaj said.

Anand abruptly resigned from the Delhi cabinet on April 10, after accusing the party of corruption and ignoring Dalits. He described his stint with the AAP as a “bad dream” while joining the BSP on May 5.

Anand was disqualified under anti-defection laws and the same anti-defection laws are likely to be applied to Tanwar for joining the BJP.

However, a byelection is not likely to be held because the MLA has less than a year on their tenure.

The 10th schedule of the Constitution deals with situations when a lawmaker switches sides. Lawmakers can be disqualified for voluntarily giving up the membership of a political party or joining another political party after the election.

Anand’s disqualification brought down the AAP’s strength in the 70-memberassembly to 61. The BJP had eight lawmakers, which went down to seven after Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, the Badarpur legislator, resigned from the assembly last month after being elected to the Lok Sabha from the South Delhi parliamentary constituency.