Meet Sushil Kumar Rinku: AAP MP, who reached Parliament ‘in chains’, joins BJP

In August last year, Sushil Kumar Rinku, the then Aam Aadmi Party MP, arrived in the Parliament complex in chains to protest against his suspension from Lok Sabha and that of his party colleagues Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha from Rajya Sabha. Pictures of Sushil Kumar Rinku roaming around the Parliament complex raising slogans of “Free country's democracy from chains of slavery", had gone viral on social media.

Sushil Kumar Rinku accused the BJP-led central government of “killing” democracy and appealed to people to dislodge the saffron party from power in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Interestingly, in less than a year after joining the AAP, Sushil Rinku again jumped ship to come into the Bharatiya Janata Party fold, giving a setback to the Arvind Kejriwal-led party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

Who is Sushil Kumar Rinku?

• Sushil Kumar Rinku, a Dalit, began his political career as a municipal corporation councillor. He became the MLA on a Congress ticket in 2017.
• However, he tasted defeat in the 2022 assembly elections by AAP candidate Sheetal Angural.
• In April 2023, Sushil Kumar Rinku resigned from the Congress to join the AAP in the presence of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Bhagwant Mann in Jalandhar.
• Sushil Kumar Rinku was named as the AAP candidate from the Jalandhar parliamentary seat in the party's first list of candidates.
• The AAP had fielded Rinku from the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat in the by-election and won it after defeating Congress candidate Karamjit Kaur Chaudhary by a margin of 58,691 votes.
• There had been speculation that Rinku would join the BJP.
• After some reports claimed that Rinku was not happy as his projects which he had promised before the 2023 bypoll were not implemented, Bhaghwant Mann had even held a close-door meeting with Rinku on March 19, news agency PTI reported.
• Recently, Rinku had even batted for an alliance with the Congress while speaking to a TV channel. The AAP is contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Punjab alone.

(With inputs from agencies)