The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which won handily in the Delhi Municipal Corporation elections in December 2022, no longer has a simple majority in the corporation.
The AAP now has 124 members out of the 250-member corporation after three of its council members—Behen Preeti from Dilshad Garden, Sarita Phogat from Green Park, and Praveen Kumar from Madanpur Khadar—joined the Delhi BJP on Thursday. After being elected to the Lok Sabha, Kamaljeet Sehrawat resigned, leaving one seat empty.
The election for the final seat of the 18-member standing committee is scheduled for Thursday, and Congress, with its nine representatives, might be very important. The result could be considerably impacted if these council members decide not to participate in the meeting. The head of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee, Devender Yadav, said that a decision had not yet been made on this issue.
In the meantime, there are now 115 BJP council members in total.
According to Praveen Shankar Kapoor, a spokesman for the Delhi BJP, the MCD has 249 elected council members. He said that the AAP had 124 council members with the majority mark of 125.
Sardar Raja Iqbal Singh, the opposition leader, declared that the AAP had “lost its moral right to be in power”.
Ten AAP council members have joined the BJP since December 2022, bringing the party’s total down from 134 to 124. The BJP had secured 104 seats when one independent councillor, Gajendra Daral, joined it. Ten AAP councillors then switched to the BJP, bringing its total strength to 115.
According to Kapoor, the three council members chose to join the BJP because they were dissatisfied with their inability to complete the tasks assigned to them and because of the growing corruption inside the AAP.
Behen Preeti, who had previously run for office on the Congress ticket and as an independent, claimed that her sole motivation for joining the AAP was the desire to usher in changes. However, she said that corruption had permeated the party and its national convenor today. “When Atishi was a PWD minister, we sent a letter and requested the department to improve the terrible conditions of roads, but no action was taken,” she continued.
Delhi was experiencing a number of issues, according to Councillor Praveen Kumar, but the mayor and other AAP officials were not paying attention. “I have joined BJP to raise and solve the problems of the public,” he stated.
The AAP accused the BJP of stealing council members.
“We all are terribly shocked at the audacity and meanness of BJP to keep poaching on AAP councillors, especially Phogat, for the reasons worth ED and CBI investigation. Their operation lotus has ashamed democracy. During joining, Phogat didn’t even speak a word and hence I am worried about her, more so because she never showed discontentment. She suffered from brain tumour and recently lost her husband. She is in trauma and BJP seems to have tortured her. Her house is locked, phones are off and she is not reachable,” AAP MLA Somnath Bharti said on X (formerly Twitter).