AAP founders to defectors: How Raghav Chadha’s revolt against Kejriwal reflects simmering churn
Despite repeated high-profile exits, AAP’s electoral trajectory has remained largely unaffected so far, raising questions about whether organisational consolidation, rather than plural leadership, has been key to its political durability.
Former AAP leader Raghav Chadha with AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal (File photo) The defection of Raghav Chadha, along with six other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs including Swati Maliwal, to the BJP marks perhaps the most consequential exit of the AAP’s founding leaders in recent years. Both Chadha and Maliwal trace their political roots to the party’s formative phase and were long seen as part of party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s inner circle. Their departure, however, is less an aberration than the latest chapter in a long arc that has seen the AAP’s several key figures either walk out or be pushed out of it over the past decade.
In many ways, this churn has fundamentally reshaped AAP—from a movement-driven collective that emerged out of the India Against Corruption agitation in 2011-12 into a centralised political organisation anchored around Kejriwal’s leadership. Yet, despite repeated high-profile exits, the AAP’s electoral trajectory, especially in Delhi, has remained largely unaffected so far, raising questions about whether organisational consolidation, rather than plural leadership, has been key to its political durability.
Movement to party: early faultlines
The AAP’s origins lie in the anti-corruption mobilisation of 2011–12, where Kejriwal worked alongside figures such as Kiran Bedi, Prashant Bhushan and others under the leadership of Anna Hazare. The first rupture came even before the party’s formation, when Bedi and Hazare opposed the decision to enter electoral politics. Bedi would go on to join the BJP in 2015, symbolising an early ideological split within the movement.
When the AAP was formally launched in 2012, it attempted to institutionalise internal democracy through bodies such as the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) and national executive, which included leaders like Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas and Shazia Ilmi. The structure allowed for multiple centres of influence, reflecting the movement’s ethos. This collective leadership model, however, would soon come under strain.
Phase I exits: Ilmi, Bhushan, Yadav
The first wave of exits was marked by a clash between competing visions of the party. Ilmi, a co-founder and prominent spokesperson, resigned in 2014 citing a “lack of inner-party democracy” and the rise of a “coterie” around Kejriwal. Her criticism that the AAP was drifting away from its founding ideals would echo by leaders who subsequently left the party.
The most significant rupture came with Bhushan and Yadav, both central to the AAP’s ideological and organisational framework. As members of the PAC, they had played key roles in the party’s manifesto drafting, candidate selection and shaping its discourse on transparency and decentralisation. Their removal in 2015, following a bitter internal battle, marked a decisive shift. They accused the party leadership of centralising decision-making and resisting transparency reforms, including bringing the party under the RTI framework.
The AAP high command’s counter was equally sharp: it accused them of attempting to undermine the party and even sabotage its electoral prospects. Their expulsion signalled the end of institutionalised dissent within the party’s top structures.
Around the same time, activists like Anjali Damania also exited, citing concerns over ethical compromises. The early years thus saw a steady thinning of the party’s original ideological core.
Yet, electorally, the AAP only grew stronger. From 28 seats in the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections, it surged to a landslide victory of 67 seats in 2015—suggesting that internal turmoil had little resonance with voters.
Phase II turmoil: Mishra, Vishwas, Khetan
The second phase of churn was less about ideology and more about political confrontation and allegations.
Kapil Mishra, once a minister in the Kejriwal government, was sacked in 2017 after accusing the leadership of corruption. He positioned himself as a whistle-blower, but the AAP dismissed the charges as politically motivated and pointed to his subsequent proximity to the BJP. His eventual shift to the BJP reinforced the party’s claim that dissent was often intertwined with external political alignments.
A similar narrative unfolded with Kumar Vishwas, one of the AAP’s most recognisable early faces. A founding member and key campaigner, Vishwas turned into a vocal critic after being denied a Rajya Sabha berth in 2018. While he framed his marginalisation as a betrayal of the AAP’s founding ideals, the party leadership accused him of being part of efforts to destabilise the Kejriwal-led Delhi government, even hinting at his collusion with the BJP.
Journalist-turned-politicians Ashutosh and Ashish Khetan quit the party around the same time, citing personal or professional reasons. However, their departures also pointed to a shrinking space for independent power centres within the party as leadership became more tightly controlled.
Phase III churn: Chadha, Maliwal
The latest phase of defections reflects a different context—one defined by the AAP’s national ambitions and its intensifying confrontation with the BJP.
Chadha’s innings exemplified this shift. Once seen as a protégé of Kejriwal and a key strategist, his marginalisation was accompanied by unusually direct accusations from the party leadership—that he had failed to take a sufficiently adversarial stand against the Narendra Modi government and distanced himself from the party during its moments of political crisis. Chadha, in turn, framed the party’s action as a bid to silence dissent.
Maliwal’s exit followed a different trajectory, rooted in personal and political rows that quickly escalated into a broader confrontation. Initially treated as an internal issue, it soon turned into a public battle, with the party accusing her of being used as part of a larger political conspiracy. The shift in the AAP’s tone in her case—from acknowledgment to outright confrontation—reflected the heightened stakes of the party’s political positioning.
Electoral resilience
Despite the churn, the AAP’s electoral performance remained robust. The party not only consolidated its position after the early exits but also expanded its vote share, winning 63 seats in Delhi in 2020 after its 2015 landslide. The party however lost the 2025 Delhi elections after three terms to the BJP, getting 22 seats as against the BJP’s 48.
The AAP also swept to power in Punjab, winning the 2022 Assembly polls by a landslide as it bagged 92 of the state’s 117 seats.
AAP defectors, meanwhile, have struggled to replicate their influence outside the party. Whether through splinter groups like those formed by Bhushan and Yadav or through individual political journeys, their electoral impact has been limited so far.
Share
