Shafaqna India: Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, accompanied by party MLAs, departed for Delhi on Tuesday morning to meet President Droupadi Murmu regarding the recent defection of seven Rajya Sabha MPs to the BJP.
On April 24, the Aam Aadmi Party suffered a jolt when seven of its 10 Rajya Sabha MPs — Raghav Chadha, Ashok Mittal, Sandeep Pathak, Harbhajan Singh, Rajendra Gupta, Vikramjit Sahney and Swati Maliwal — quit and merged with the BJP, alleging that the party had strayed from its principles, values and core morals. Six of the seven MPs who left AAP were from Punjab.
Mann is scheduled to meet the President at 12 noon at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday.
While departing for Delhi, Mann said that these MPs were sent to the Rajya Sabha to take up the interests of Punjab, but they never fulfilled the mandate given to them by Punjab MLAs.
He affirmed that all AAP MLAs stand united with the party. “Only I have been given time for the meeting,” Mann said while speaking to reporters here.
“The President is the guardian of the Constitution. She is the constitutional head of the country,” he added.
The MLAs and ministers gathered at the Chief Minister’s residence in the morning before heading to Delhi, carrying placards that read ‘Punjab Mann De Naal’ and ‘Punjab’s Traitors.’ The legislators left for Delhi in buses.
Meanwhile, Raghav Chadha will also be calling on the President just before Mann’s meeting, along with Pathak, Gupta, and Mittal, to allege misuse of state machinery by the AAP government and claim that they are being targeted by the Punjab government due to alleged “political vendetta”.
On April 27, Rajya Sabha Chairman C P Radhakrishnan officially accepted the merger of the MPs with the BJP, reducing the strength of Arvind Kejriwal’s party in the Upper House to three.
