First exit from AAP after candidates announced, party looks at new roles for dropped MLAs

Polling more than 72,000 votes against the BJP candidate’s over 35,000, Rehman had swept Seelampur by a margin of over 36,920 votes in the 2020 Delhi elections. Cut to the next successive election, he is among 16 sitting AAP MLAs out of 62 to have been dropped in two lists — consisting of 31 picks out of 70 Assembly constituencies in the capital — and is unlikely to be the last one to be replaced.

According to AAP insiders, the party has a plan for others like him: counting on their loyalty going forward, AAP legislators from Delhi who have been, or will be, dropped in days to come, are going to be “accommodated in the party’s expanding national organisational structure”.

“In the immediate aftermath of their tickets being cut, the party will utilise MLAs in its organisation in the city for the upcoming Delhi elections; going forward, these leaders, especially those who are in charge of other states, will be sent there to help expand the AAP’s national footprint,” a party insider said.

In the two lists it has released so far, the AAP dropped its Matiala MLA Gulab Singh and then its Timarpur legislator Dilip Pandey — both of whom have discharged organisational duties both in and beyond the city.

While Singh was both state in-charge and then election campaign in-charge for the AAP in Gujarat for the 2022 polls, Pandey was the party’s Delhi Convener, then in-charge for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi in addition to being part of the party’s organisational activities in Uttar Pradesh.

“Leaders like Gulab (Singh) and Dilip (Pandey) are hardcore AAP leaders and not opportunists; just like them, there are others who have the AAP at the core of their being. All such leaders will be given the responsibility of extending the organisation of the youngest national party across the country,” the insider said.