New Delhi: Rajya Sabha chairman C P Radhakrishnan has officially accepted the merger of seven AAP MPs with the BJP, taking the governing party's strength in the 245-member upper House to 113.
With Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Harbhajan Singh, Swati Maliwal, Vikramjit Sahney and Rajinder Gupta defecting, AAP's strength in the Rajya Sabha now stands at three. The Rajya Sabha website now lists these MPs as part of the BJP.
On Monday, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the chairman has accepted the merger of the seven AAP MPs with the BJP. "Welcome to nation-building NDA under PM Modi's visionary leadership and goodbye to 'tukde-tukde' INDI alliance," he said.
However, AAP MP Sanjay Singh, who had written to Radhakrishnan on Sunday seeking disqualification of the MPs under the Constitution's Tenth Schedule, in another letter on Monday sought clarification from the Rajya Sabha Secretary General on what basis the party position of AAP had been altered in Rajya Sabha records.
If this is not clarified, AAP will move court on this "unilateral decision", Singh said. This was done "without any prior intimation to or concurrence of AAP or its floor leader in the House", he said. In his Monday letter, Singh said any arbitrary alteration in party position, without following due procedure, would have "serious consequences" on the rights of the party and its members. He sought an inquiry.
Meanwhile, a section of legal experts highlighted the Tenth Schedule's inability to stop political defections when they acquire the scale of a "merger". The "merger" exception under the schedule's para 4 stipulates in sub-paragraph 2 that such a merger is valid if at least two-thirds of the legislature party agrees to it.
On his decision to leave AAP, Chadha on Monday in a video message alleged the work environment in AAP had turned "toxic". It is trapped in the hands of some corrupt and compromised people who work for personal gains, he claimed.
Congress' Jairam Ramesh said the only surprise in the chairman's decision is that it "took so long". "Till recently, BJP had questions on their integrity and claimed to have evidence, but all that is now forgotten. ED was raiding some until recently, but one can bet that those will stop now," he said. "Lotus has become Lootus."
