New Delhi: Punjab's ruling Aam Aadmi Party suffered a major political setback on Monday as three of its leaders, including two sitting legislators, walked out of the party and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the national capital. The defections, coming months ahead of the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections, mark the first significant break in the ruling party's ranks since it swept to power in the state in 2022.
Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra, the MLA from Sanaur, and Chetan Singh Jouramajra, the MLA from Samana, both in Patiala district, were formally inducted into the BJP at the party headquarters in Delhi on Monday. The third leader, suspended AAP MLA and former Indian Police Service officer Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, who represents Amritsar North, resigned from the Punjab Legislative Assembly on Monday and also reached Delhi, with reports saying he too was set to join the BJP.
The dramatic scenes outside the BJP headquarters set the tone for the day. Pathanmajra and Jouramajra were seen raising slogans of "BJP zindabad" along with other leaders, in visuals shared by news agency ANI, signalling that their break with the AAP was complete and their new political journey had begun.
The resignations had come a day earlier. On Sunday, November 1, Pathanmajra and Jouramajra resigned from the primary membership of the Aam Aadmi Party. Both leaders had been suspended by the party earlier over alleged anti-party activities, and the party had said it would approach the Punjab Assembly Speaker seeking the cancellation of their legislative membership.
The timing of the exits is significant. They came just a day after the AAP released its first list of 40 candidates for the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections on Saturday. Neither Sanaur nor Samana figured in that list. The list named Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann from Dhuri, Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan from Kotkapura, and minister Sanjeev Arora, who is currently in jail, from Ludhiana West.
Both departing leaders have accused the Bhagwant Mann-led government of failing to address key issues in the state. They pointed to the drug menace, rising state debt and governance-related concerns as reasons for their disillusionment. Before announcing his resignation, Pathanmajra had said that he and Jouramajra would join a party that worked in the interest of Punjab.
He also indicated that he intended to contest the 2027 Assembly elections from Sanaur on a BJP ticket, describing the BJP as a national party that could benefit the state.
Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh's resignation added a third dimension to the day's developments. The former IPS officer, who was suspended from the AAP on June 29, 2025, submitted his resignation as a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly to Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan. In his letter, he said his resignation would take effect from November 1, 2026.
Addressing the people of Amritsar, he expressed gratitude for their support and called for unity to overcome what he described as the politics of lanes and ribbon-cutting, and to transform Punjab, which he said was trapped by drugs, extortion, gangsterism and corruption, back into a progressive state. He said his sole purpose was "Punjab First" and that he aimed to ensure clean politics and transparent administration.
The BJP's induction of the rebel leaders drew sharp criticism from the ruling party in Punjab. Punjab AAP president Aman Arora criticised the BJP over its attempts to induct leaders who had left or been suspended by other parties. AAP spokesperson and MLA Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal also attacked the BJP, using the phrase "kabaad di dukaan" to describe what he called its effort to gather leaders from other parties.
The BJP, for its part, is expecting a wave of resentment within the AAP as the ruling party unveils its candidate lists, retaining some MLAs and dropping others. Reports said BJP president Nitin Nabin was expected to facilitate the induction of the new leaders in Delhi, and that BJP national secretary Sandeep Pathak, who is familiar with a majority of the AAP MLAs elected in the party's historic win in 2022, has been playing a key role in the process.
The defections matter because of the scale of the AAP's 2022 victory. The party won a landslide majority in Punjab, and its MLAs have largely stayed together since. The exit of three legislators in two days, therefore, is not just a numerical loss but a signal of internal churn at a time when the party is preparing its re-election campaign.
The question now is whether more sitting MLAs who have been denied tickets in the first list, or who fear being dropped in subsequent lists, will follow the same path.
For the BJP, the inductions are a boost in a state where it has struggled to build a strong organisational base on its own. Punjab has traditionally been dominated by the Congress, the Akali Dal and, since 2022, the AAP. By bringing in sitting AAP legislators, the BJP gains faces with local influence in Patiala district and Amritsar, two regions that will matter in the coming election.
The immediate procedural question concerns the legislative membership of the departing MLAs. The AAP has said it will petition the Speaker to disqualify Pathanmajra and Jouramajra for anti-party activities, while Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh has already resigned his seat. How the Speaker handles these matters, and whether by-elections follow, will be watched closely in the coming weeks.
What is clear is that Punjab's politics has entered an active phase well before the formal election schedule. With candidate lists beginning to appear and disgruntled leaders switching sides, the 2027 contest is already taking shape, and Monday's defections may be only the opening act of a longer season of political realignment in the state.
The backdrop to Monday's events is the AAP's sweeping victory in Punjab in 2022, when the party won a commanding majority and Bhagwant Mann became chief minister. That mandate gave the party an unusually large legislative contingent, and with it, an unusually large number of aspirants for tickets. As the 2027 election approaches, the competition for nominations has intensified, and leaders who sense they may be sidelined have begun exploring alternatives.
The BJP, which has historically struggled to convert votes into seats in Punjab on its own, has been receptive. By inducting sitting legislators, it gains not only names but also local networks, workers and influence in constituencies where it previously had little presence. Whether Monday's inductions trigger a larger exodus will depend on the AAP's remaining candidate lists and on how the party manages discontent among its sitting MLAs in the coming weeks.
(Reporting based on The Times of India, The Tribune and The Free Press Journal.)