Rajya Sabha Chairman CP Radhakrishnan's acceptance on Monday of the merger of seven of the Aam Aadmi Party's MPs with the BJP is a significant blow to the party led by Arvind Kejriwal.
According to the most recent party-wise count on the Rajya Sabha website, the BJP's numbers in the house have increased from 106 to 113, while the AAP's numbers have decreased to three from the previous ten. The number of members of the ruling NDA in the house has increased from 141 to 148.
In the Rajya Sabha, the BJP alone is currently very near to the majority threshold of 123.Seven AAP members, who make up two-thirds of the AAP legislature party in the Rajya Sabha, signed the letter of merger with the BJP. RS sources told The Tribune that the chairman sought legal advice on the matter.
Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, Swati Maliwal, Harbhajan Singh, Vikramjit Sahney, Ashok Mittal, and Rajender Gupta are the members of parliament. According to RS officials, everyone has agreed to merge with the BJP and signed the defection document.
The Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which allows a merger if two-thirds of a party's members agree to one, was judged to be in compliance with the letter by the RS chairman. In the meantime, AAP had written to Chairman Radhakrishnan yesterday, requesting that the MPs be disqualified and claiming a breach of the anti-defection law's Tenth Schedule.According to legal experts cited by AAP, such as Kapil Sibal, for the merger to be successful, the legislature party must come after the political parties, not the other way around.
But in Maharashtra, NCP sections led by the late Ajit Pawar and Shiv Sena factions led by Eknath Shinde had already split from their parent parties by seceding with two-thirds of the MPs. Eventually, these groups also received electoral insignia from the main party.