Days after a public falling out with the Aam Aadmi Party, Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha left the party he co-founded and "merged" with the Centre's ruling BJP, along with six other AAP MPs from the Upper House of Parliament.
The move was made possible under the Constitution's Tenth Schedule, which exempts a member of the Rajya Sabha from anti-defection disqualification if two-thirds of their party's legislators agree to merge with another party.
AAP has 10 Rajya Sabha MPs, of which seven are now gone, announced Chadha, flanked by fellow RS MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Kumar Mittal.
The three that remain with the AAP are Sanjay Singh, Balbir Singh Seechewal, and ND Gupta.
The law also states that if a party sacks an MP, they retain their membership, which is why the AAP did not sack Chadha as he would have remained a Rajya Sabha member while being anti-AAP.
The limbo could be resolved if Chadha could gather enough numbers, which he did on Friday, April 24.
The move is a major setback for the state's ruling party as the Punjab assembly elections are barely 10 months away.
Of the seven who've switched sides, six are MPs from Punjab, elected in 2022 after the AAP gained a brute majority in the Vidhan Sabha elections there.
Swati Maliwal, a Delhi-based activist, is the seventh to quit, but her term is until 2030.
The ones who quit are essentially non-politicians or businesspeople, while Raghav Chadha and Swati Maliwal are activists who were part of the AAP's founding team in 2012.
