New Delhi: A day after seven Rajya Sabha MPs of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), led by Raghav Chadha, merged with the BJP, AAP workers staged protests against them, branding them as “traitors”.
Among the targets on Saturday was Harbhajan Singh. The protesters sprayed the word ‘gadar’ (traitor) in black paint on the compound walls of his bungalow, as a group of party workers protested outside his Jalandhar residence wearing black blindfolds.
The cricketer-turned-politician, elected to the Rajya Sabha in April 2022, was reportedly not at his residence during the protest.
There were protests at Sandeep Pathak’s house in Ludhiana, as well as outside the main entrance of the Phagwara campus of Lovely Professional University, owned by Ashok Mittal.
Mittal’s poster outside the LPU campus was defaced, and slogans like ‘Punjab de Gaddar’ raised as the protesters accused the MPs of betraying the people of Punjab, PTI reported.
The protests came a day after Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann described the seven MPs who quit the party as “gaddars”. Mann also alleged at a press conference that the BJP was trying to break the AAP and had “betrayed the people of Punjab.”
Chadha, Pathak and Mittal apart, the others to leave AAP and cross over to the BJP were Swati Maliwal, Vikram Singh Sahney and Rajinder Gupta.
Chadha, Mittal and Pathak formally joined the BJP shortly after announcing their decision on Friday, in the presence of saffron party chief Nitin Nabin. The four others are expected to join BJP in the near future.