AAP stares at a weakened road to 2027 Punjab Assembly election

With the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections just months away, the exit of seven AAP parliamentarians, six of them from the State, is likely to leave the party considerably weakened, even as its bid gain sympathy by branding the defectors as traitors may offer little electoral consolation.

On April 24, AAP Rajya Sabha MPs Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney, and Swati Maliwal quit the AAP to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The following day, Saturday (April 25, 2026), several AAP workers in Punjab vented their anger against the defectors by staging protests outside their residences and offices, describing them as “traitors”.