Senior leaders were present on Wednesday at the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) headquarters in Delhi when Kartar Singh Tanwar, an Aam Aadmi Party MLA from the Chhatarpur constituency, Raaj Kumar Anand, an ex-MLA from Patel Nagar and former minister of Delhi, and Veena Anand, another former MLA from Patel Nagar, joined the party.
AAP councillor Umed Singh Phogat from the Said-Ul-Ajaib ward in south Delhi, along with a few other AAP members, joined the saffron party on this occasion, according to Delhi BJP chairman Virendra Sachdeva. Arun Singh, the national general secretary of the BJP, was present along with other officials to greet them.
“The AAP leaders thought that working in the AAP was akin to working under a dictatorship, therefore they decided to join the BJP after being motivated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and efforts. In the AAP, corruption is at an all-time high. They’ve all joined the BJP, and we’re happy to have them all as members of the party, Sachdeva added.
Tanwar was re-fielded by the AAP in 2020 after winning a seat in Chhatarpur the first time around in 2015. He was a BJP member before to joining the AAP in 2014, and BJP leaders referred to his return as “home coming.”
On the AAP ticket, Raj Kumar Anand won the 2020 election to become an MLA from the reserved seat of Patel Nagar. He later became the minister of social welfare in the Delhi government.
On April 10, he abruptly quit from the Cabinet, calling his time with the AAP a “bad dream” and accusing them of corruption and neglecting Dalits. A month later, on May 5, he became a member of the BSP and stood for the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from the New Delhi seat. On June 14, the assembly speaker removed him from the House according to anti-defection regulations.
In 2013, Veena Anand was chosen to represent Patel Nagar as an AAP MLA. Before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, she was a prominent AAP politician in the region and the wife of Raaj Kumar Anand.
The AAP, whose key leaders, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, are in jail in charges relating to alleged corruption, is dealt a blow by the leaders’ decision to switch sides, which occurs a few months before the assembly elections in Delhi, which are anticipated to take place in January–February 2025.