AAP exodus: A tale of rebellion from 'assault' on Swati Maliwal to downsizing of Raghav Chadha

New Delhi: The mass exodus of the Aam Aadmi Party Rajya Sabha members on Friday was the breaking of a faultline that was drawn back in 2024, when Swati Maliwal, one of the seven who quit, alleged physical assault at then Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence.

On May 13, 2024, she accused a close aide of Kejriwal of thrashing her at the chief minister's residence.

The rift broadened, veritably, unfixably, earlier this month, when the AAP ousted Raghav Chadha from the post of the party's deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.

Even before their exit on Friday, murmurs were rife that their association in the party may not last long.

Their colleagues in the party and in the Rajya Sabha, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Sandeep Pathak, seldom expressed their dissent publicly, and for this very reason, their quitting came as a general surprise.

Earlier in the day, in a press conference, Chadha announced that the seven were exiting the party.

This combo image shows Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs, clockwise from top left, Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Swati Maliwal, Harbhajan Singh, Vikramjit Singh Sahney and Rajinder Gupta. In a massive jolt to AAP, seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs, including Chadha, Pathak and Mittal, quit the party on Friday, April 24, 2026.

Mittal's decision to quit AAP came close on the heels of Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids at his residential and business premises in Punjab, related to a Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) case.

AAP leader Sanjay Singh blamed the mass desertion on the BJP's "Operation Lotus".

In a press conference he held soon after the exodus, Singh charged that the seven MPs quit the party under fear of action by the ED and CBI.

Chadha, a prominent face in the AAP all along, had all but fallen out of favour with the senior leadership since the arrest of the party's national convener Arvind Kejriwal in 2024.

After Maliwal, he was the second AAP Rajya Sabha MP, whose fallout with the top leadership spilled out in the public domain Chadha was questioned by the party about his absence when Kejriwal was arrested in connection with an excise policy case in March 2024. His silence on political matters, absence from party events, and abstention from questioning the Centre in the Upper House were also talked about.

Once considered the 'blue-eyed boy' of the AAP supremo, Chadha scaled the political ladder rather quickly and was nominated as Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab in 2022.

His clout after the victory of AAP in the Punjab Assembly polls in the same year soared to the extent that he began to be treated as the most powerful politician in the state after Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

His decline, however, was just as steep. Soon, he was removed from many significant posts, including co-incharge of Punjab affairs and as a poll strategist.

The AAP's top leaders accused him of distancing himself from the party after the Kejriwal-led Delhi government got embroiled in the excise policy case. He was accused of alienating the party when it hit a rough patch, as one after the other, Kejriwal, his ex-deputy Manish Sisodia, and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, were arrested in the case.

The flashpoint arrived with the party removing him from the post of AAP deputy leader in the Lok Sabha earlier this month.

At the time of his sack, Chadha warned that he was like a river that would turn into a devastating flood at an appropriate time.

His words proved prophetic as he inflicted a deep wound on the AAP as it prepares for assembly polls in Punjab, Gujarat, and Goa.

Meanwhile, Maliwal, in a long post, alleged that she was leaving the AAP in view of "unchecked corruption" in the party, incidents of "harassment and assault" against women, and promotion of "thuggish" elements under the patronage of Kejriwal.

Except for Maliwal, who is the Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi, all others who quit were sent to the Upper House from Punjab.