AAP launches full-blown attack on Raghav Chadha, BJP comes out in support

On April 2, 2026, the Aam Aadmi Party replaced Raghav Chadha with Ashok Kumar Mittal as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha

Although the rift between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and party’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha has come out in the open, with both attacking each other on Friday (April 3, 2026), it has been brewing in the background, according to party leaders.

From AAP’s boy wonder to being termed “compromised”, Raghav Chadha has come a long way. He still has two years remaining in his Rajya Sabha tenure.

When leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) launched an attack on its out-of-favor Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Friday — a day after Arvind Kejriwal’s party snipped the wings of its one-time boy wonder — they mentioned his obsession with raising “soft” matters like prices of samosas at airports. Raghav himself had sportingly welcomed jokes about this just a few days ago: “The memes must not stop,” he’d posted on X.

But there were more serious matters at play behind the scenes. These stretch from Delhi, where the party lost last year, to Punjab, where it remains in power and from where Chadha is MP; and right down to a motion moved in Parliament just last month.

Let’s go latest first.

Motion against CEC Gyanesh; and the issue of LPG

Senior AAP leaders Atishi and Saurabh Bharadwaj both mentioned an impeachment motion submitted by Opposition parties against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during the second stage of the Budget Session of Parliament last month. Gyanesh Kumar is alleged to be biased in favor of the BJP-led NDA ruling at the Centre.

Saurabh Bhardwaj mentioned that Raghav Chadha refused to sign the motion. Atishi was more direct in her video, asking him: “Why are you so scared of the BJP? Why are you afraid of questioning PM Narendra Modi?”

She cited the allegations against the Election Commission: “Today, in front of our eyes… election in West Bengal is being stolen. But you are afraid to speak on it. We all saw how the votes were cut in Delhi in a wrong manner. The BJP stole the election.”

She mentioned that when West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition at large came up with an impeachment motion against Gyanesh Kumar, “you refused to sign it.”

“Have you ever questioned the attack on democracy? Have you ever questioned voter deletion, or incorrectly-made votes?” she added.

She also noted that he had not spoken about the crisis of LPG availability due to the US–Iran war affecting supplies from West Asia. “When AAP MPs raised the issue of LPG gas cylinders, you were asked to speak on it. You remained silent,” she alleged.

Chadha has so far not reacted to pointed allegations, though he has released a video saying he was being “silenced” by the AAP. He won as the AAP candidate for the Rajya Sabha from Punjab soon after the party led there by Bhagwant Mann formed the government with a brute majority in 2022.

In Punjab, where he was AAP co-incharge in the lead-up to the big win, Chadha faced allegations of acting as “super CM” while being an “outsider” — he is a Punjabi but from Delhi. The party defended him after he was sent to the Rajya Sabha from the state. The AAP also suspended high-profile MLA and former senior police Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, who made allegations along these lines against Chadha, for alleged anti-party activities.

Chadha subsequently reduced his activities in Punjab by the turn of 2023–24, and overall in the AAP, after initially defending the party when some of its leaders were arrested in a corruption case in Delhi. This did not go unnoticed.

Kejriwal and AAP’s second-in-command Manish Sisodia, meantime, have been extra-focused on Punjab ever since the party lost power in Delhi in 2025.

When Kejriwal got big relief in corruption case…

Atishi and Bharadwaj both pointed towards the time when Kejriwal, who was CM of Delhi then, was arrested in the case tied to the excise policy (or liquor sales policy) of the Delhi government in early 2024.

“We were on the streets, protesting, being beaten by police. You (Chadha) were not in the country even at that time; you went and hid somewhere,” Bharadwaj said in his video.

The stated reason from Chadha at the time was that he was undergoing treatment for an eye affliction in the UK. Atishi said, “We were seen in different police stations in Delhi — in Narela, in Bawana. You were in London because you had an eye operation.”

And when the media asked “a lot of questions” about his absence, Atishi said, “We repeatedly told them, ‘no, no, Raghav Chadha ji is not scared. He has an eye problem.’.. But today I am also wondering that were you then, too, scared of BJP… It is possible that you are afraid of going to jail.”

Chadha had remained away during Kejriwal’s almost six-month incarceration and met him only a few days after his release on September 13, 2024.

This was a week before Atishi was made CM as Kejriwal resigned citing a ethical stance.

Chadha was not a big part of the AAP campaign in the Delhi assembly elections just months later, in early 2025. He did make some sporadic appearances on party during that campaign. The AAP lost to the BJP after almost a decade in power.

More recently, Chadha maintained silence when Kejriwal, former deputy CM Sisodia and other AAP leaders were discharged by a Delhi court in that excise policy graft case in March. He was not at the party rally at Jantar Mantar either. He has not spoken on that or taken questions about that.

Bharadwaj said Chadha was raising trivial issues instead: “It doesn’t matter to the government if someone does his own soft PR (public relations exercise) in Parliament. Because a small party has very limited time in the Parliament, if someone is raising the issue of ‘samosas’ during that time, it is more important to raise the big issues of the country.”

The AAP currently has 10 members in the Rajya Assembly, including seven from Punjab and three from Delhi.Chadha now becomes the second Rajya Sabha MP of AAP, after Swati Maliwal, to have fell out with the party leadership.

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