As AAP calls Rinku traitor, focus shifts to long list of turncoats in Kejriwal-led party

Whereas Angural had switched from the BJP to the AAP in December 2021. Within 24 hours of his joining, he was declared as the AAP candidate from Jalandhar West, reportedly leaving old AAP workers disappointed.

Therefore, Opposition parties, especially the BJP, are now reminding the AAP of the long list of turncoats it had accommodated previously.

Earlier last month, former Congress MLA Gurpreet Singh GP joined the AAP and was named as the party’s Lok Sabha candidate from Fatehgarh Sahib. GP had started his political journey from the SAD, shifting to the People’s Party of Punjab in 2011 and then the Congress a year later. The AAP is thus his fourth party. Also, sitting Congress MLA Dr Raj Kumar Chabbewal quit the Congress to join the AAP on March 16.

AAP Ludhiana North MLA Madan Lal Bagga had switched from Akali Dal in July 2021. Bagga had remained in the Congress for years before joining the SAD in 2019 and then again switching to the AAP.

Atam Nagar MLA Kulwant Singh Sidhu had joined the AAP in August 2021. He had remained in the Congress for several years and was the state Congress secretary at the time of quitting the party.

Ludhiana West MLA Gurpreet Singh Gogi had joined the AAP a month before the state polls in January 2022. He was declared as the AAP candidate and won as well. He was a Congress councillor and chairman of the Punjab State Industrial Export Corporation earlier.

Ashok Parashar Pappi, the then general secretary of the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee, quit the grand old party to join the AAP in October 2021. He is now the AAP MLA from Ludhiana Central.

Jagroop Singh Gill, a five-time Congress councillor from Bathinda, joined the AAP after differences cropped up between him and Manpreet Singh Badal over not making him the mayor of Bathinda. Gill is the Bathinda Urban MLA now.

On the other hand, Agriculture Minister Gurmeet Singh Khudian, who had been associated with the Congress since 2004, joined the AAP in July 2021, barely six months ahead of the Vidhan Sabha polls. Khudian has also been nominated as the party’s Bathinda parliamentary seat candidate. He had defeated former Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal in Lambi in the 2022 Assembly elections.

AAP Bathinda Rural MLA Amit Rattan Kotfatta had joined the Arvind Kejriwal-led party in January 2022. Kotfatta was earlier in the SAD and had unsuccessfully contested the Bathinda rural seat in 2017. He was expelled from the SAD in 2020 for allegedly duping his own party workers. He was arrested in a bribery case by the Vigilance Bureau in February 2023. He has been out on bail since May 2023.

“The list of such turncoats joining the party is long, so the AAP has no moral ground to accuse others. They themselves ignore their workers and trust outsiders, so they shouldn’t feel surprised if anyone leaves the AAP,” said an AAP worker in Mansa who has been associated with the party since its inception.

“In 2022, over 65 of the 117 AAP candidates in the state were turncoats. The AAP came into existence in 2012 but still couldn’t find enough candidates from within the party in 2022 and even in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. At present, five ministers, a Punjabi actor and a turncoat have been named as AAP Lok Sabha candidates while Rinku has switched to the BJP despite being offered an AAP ticket,” said another party insider on the condition of anonymity.

Reacting to the issue, BJP state president Sunil Jakhar said, “The AAP has double standards… they have different yardsticks for others… Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann is calling Rinku and Angural ‘butterflies’ and even the party is using derogatory terms for them… I want to ask them what they had to say when the duo joined the AAP?”