When leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) launched an attack on its out-of-favour Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Friday — a day after Arvind Kejriwal's party snipped the wings of its once 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.
Raghav Chadha on his wings being clipped by AAP (PTI)
But there were more serious matters at play behind the scenes.
These span 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 gas issue
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 phase of the Budget Session of Parliament last month. Gyanesh Kumar is alleged to be biased in favour 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 afraid 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 wrongly-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 issued a video saying he was being “silenced” by the AAP. He has also released two compilations of his RS speeches, the latter being focused on Punjab too.
He won as the AAP candidate for the Rajya Sabha from Punjab soon after the party there led 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 and he was sent to the Rajya Sabha from the state. The AAP also suspended high-profile MLA and former senior cop Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, who made allegations along these lines against Chadha, for alleged anti-party activities.
Chadha subsequently decreased 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, meanwhile, 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 linked 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 ailment 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, afraid of BJP… It is possible that you are afraid of going to jail.”
Chadha had remained away during Kejriwal's nearly 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 moral 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 fora 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 corruption 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 Sabha, including seven from Punjab and three from Delhi. Chadha now becomes the second Rajya Sabha MP of AAP, after Swati Maliwal, to have fallen out with the party leadership.
What Raghav Chadha raised in RS, and now
Chadha had last Friday expressed love for the memes being made around his raising of popular — or generic, according to some — issues in the Rajya Sabha.
“You guys are really creative.. keep them coming,” he wrote on X, with a meme of his own with a mock subtitle, “Sir, yeh memes band nahi hone chahiye…” — as if telling the RS chairperson, in Hindi, “these memes must not stop”.
Indeed the 37-year-old Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, one of the founding members of AAP, was on a roll this Budget Session, in that he was raising general, consumer-centric issues, from mobile recharge frustrations to what's really inside a fruit juice carton.
He most prominently raised the issue of how instant delivery by quick-commerce apps is hurting gig workers. The BJP-led NDA government thereafter asked apps not to advertise “10 minute” promises.
His picking of everyday issues in punchy rhetoric led to memes that praised him for being a “middle-class crusader” to others alleging he picks up generic issues to grab eyeballs alone. His apparent distance from his party AAP has also been noticed by social media users too.
AAP leader Sanjay Singh, also a member of the Rajya Sabha, was recently asked about Chadha's relative absence from AAP affairs. He replied that “this only Raghav can answer”.
A week on, the party delivered the answer. On Thursday, April 2, it replaced Chadha as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, with industrialist Ashok Mittal, also MP from Punjab.
The Rajya Sabha secretariat was also reportedly told not to allot him time in the House from the party's quota. Mittal, known for being the owner of Lovely Professional University, termed it a routine process.
Chadha, however, argued in a video: “Whenever I get the chance to speak in Parliament, I raise public's issues… but is it a crime or a mistake to do so?"
He went on to cite some topics he raised, and thanked those who supported him. “Don't mistake my silence for my defeat," he said, also the headline of his video. Before this video, he also shared a compilation of the issues, accompanied by an ‘avert evil eye’ emoji.
AAP says 'compromised'; BJP says ‘up to him’ to on his future
But Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann blamed Chadha's fate on Chadha himself, even answering with a “yes” when asked if the young MP was “compromised”.
There has been talk of Chadha — a chartered accountant and prominet urban face of politics ever since the AAP emerged from the Anna Hazare movement of 2011 — possibly joining the BJP, whose leaders have been sympathetic to him after AAP's action against him.
Mann did not directly say that much, but explained: “If there is a party line taken on any issue, like in Gujarat where cases have been registered against 160 AAP volunteers… instead of speaking on those, if someone raises issues of samosa rates, pizza delivery, won't you doubt that the person is speaking from some other station?”
BJP's Delhi unit chief, when asked about buzz that the Chadha may join the the saffron party, said it was "up to him to decide his future".
"Raghav Chadha should have broken his silence long ago. Arvind Kejriwal has a talent: first he uses people and then gets rid of them," Sachdeva said.
He even dedicated a she'r or couplet to Raghav Chadha: “Zindagi mein bas itna likh paya, bahut mazboot rishte the kuch kamzor logon se (All I can say of my life is, that I had very strong ties with some very weak people).”
The couplet, the original writer of which was not immediately identifiable, becomes seasonally popular on social media every time there's a political breakup.
The needle has moved decisively in around three years. In April 2023, Chadha was asked in an interview with The Indian Express about the AAP possibly being a national alternative and how “BJP leaders fear only AAP and Kejriwal”.
That was before the 2024 Lok Sabha election in which PM Modi retained power in a coalition.
Chadha had said, “As somebody who considers Kejriwal as his mentor, leader, friend, philosopher and guide, I would certainly say that my leader is the only one who can take on the might of the BJP and PM Modi. A new brand, vocabulary and a new idea of politics is required to challenge the BJP. If people like the alternative, they will vote.”
Kejriwal and he have not said anything about each other after the immediate turn of events of this week.
