Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan on Monday officially accepted the seven rebel Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MPs joining the BJP, but AAP said it will press on for their disqualification under the anti-defection law and is prepared to move court on the issue.
With this, the strength of Arvind Kejriwal-led party in the Rajya Sabha is reduced to three from 10, while the BJP's tally has increased to 113 in the 245-member House after the Secretariat included the seven MPs in the list of BJP members.
The seven MPs, six of them from Punjab, had on Friday petitioned the Chairman of the Upper House to be treated as BJP MPs after their merger.
"Hon'ble Chairman Rajya Sabha Shri C.P. Radhakrishnan Ji has accepted the merger of 7 AAP MPs with the BJP," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said on X, adding they are now members of the BJP Parliamentary Party.
The minister welcomed the seven MPs into the BJP and said they have bid goodbye to the "Tukde-Tukde INDI Alliance".
"Welcome to nation-building NDA under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji and goodbye to Tukde-Tukde INDI Alliance," the minister said.
AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh said the party was hopeful that once its letter, where objections have been raised to the merger and the MPs' disqualification has been sought under the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, is examined, the Chairman "would act in favour of the Constitution and democracy by disqualifying the seven members".
"If that does not happen, we will approach the court. It is wrong to break a party in this manner," he said.
AAP had on Sunday moved the petition before the Chairman seeking the termination of membership of these seven MPs.
Singh said that their petition has not yet been considered by the Chairman.
Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Sandeep Pathak, Vikramjit Sahney, Swati Maliwal, and Rajinder Gupta are the seven MPs who have joined the BJP, dealing a major blow to AAP.
Chadha had announced on Friday that two-thirds of the AAP MPs in the Rajya Sabha have merged with the BJP, exercising the provisions of the Constitution.
On Monday, he alleged that the work environment in AAP had turned "toxic" with leaders stopped from working, and asserted that "one or two persons can be wrong, but not all seven".
In a video on social media, Chadha said; "Today, this political party is trapped in the hands of some corrupt and compromised people. They don't work for the country but for their own personal gain."
AAP's Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj hit back over the "toxic workplace" analogy, saying even when an employee decides to leave a company, he serves a notice period instead of conspiring to damage the organisation's image.
Bharadwaj said while people may leave companies, political parties are based on ideology and not merely workplace convenience.
The Congress, meanwhile, targeted both AAP and BJP on Monday, alleging that the Arvind Kejriwal-led party has been working as the BJP's "B-team" to counter the Congress in states like Punjab and Gujarat, and its "mask" is now off.
The party said that the Chairman's decision is not at all surprising, and the MPs crossing over was both a "surgical strike as well as a pre-emptive action" as the ED had been targeting some of them till recently.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications, Jairam Ramesh, said the only surprise in the decision of the chairman is that it took so long and was not formally accepted over the weekend.
"Till very recently, the BJP had serious questions on their integrity and claimed to have solid evidence on them but all that is now conveniently forgotten. The ED was raiding some of these MPs until recently but one can bet that those will also come to a stop now," he said.
"And the ED raids that may well have taken place against some others will, of course, no longer happen. It is therefore both a surgical strike and a pre-emptive action. Lotus has become Lootus," Ramesh said.
"Operation Lotus" is a term used by opposition parties to allege poaching of their legislators by the BJP.
At a press conference, senior Congress leader Ajay Maken alleged that AAP has been giving Rajya Sabha party tickets to the wealthy in exchange for money and should thus change its name to the "Arabpati Aadmiyon ki Party (party of billionaires)".
"The mask has completely come off the face of AAP and Arvind Kejriwal," he said and claimed that more AAP leaders from Delhi and Punjab will join the BJP.
"The Aam Aadmi Party is the B team of the BJP. The leaders of AAP are traitors to the country," he alleged.
BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde welcomed all seven former AAP MPs into the party fold, saying Prime Minister Modi's resolve to make India a developed country will gain “momentum” with their experience.
“AAP's Seven, Now with BJP,” Tawde, who is also a BJP Rajya Sabha MP, said in a post on X in Hindi.
“Arvind Kejriwal's dictatorial attitude has now been fully exposed before the people of the country,” the BJP leader said.
The Rajya Sabha website now shows that the seven MPs are part of the BJP list of members.