Why Raghav Chadha suddenly found himself demoted and gagged in the Rajya Sabha
The young MP, appreciated once for being telegenic, undaunted and articulate, was considered by the Aam Aadmi Party to be afraid of the ruling dispensation and intent on his own image rather his party's
It took just a day for the mystery to unravel, publicly. Turns out the reason why Raghav Chadha had attracted limelight as an MP was indeed the very reason why he was fired as deputy leader of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Rajya Sabha. A day after AAP removed him of his title and microphone, Chadha posted a video on X with the headline, "Silenced, Not Defeated." He unequivocally said that his party had directed the Rajya Sabha Secretariat to prevent him from speaking in Parliament.
The issues that had made him a target of the party leadership, Chadha claimed, were the ones he had fought for on behalf of regular people: airport food prices, challenges facing gig delivery workers, toll taxes, bank charges, tax burdens on middle-class "The river may be stopped for a while," he said, "but it will eventually become a flood."
But AAP showed it had been ready for this. Soon after, one leader after another started posting their own videos, essentially following the same script, conveying the same message: Chaddha was scared of the BJP.
Saurabh Bharadwaj, the AAP Delhi president, addressed Chadha directly, and was blunt to the point of brutality: "Jo dar gaya, samjho mar gaya," he said, implying that a frightened person could not survive politically. Bharadwaj accused the Rajya Sabha member of raising inconsequential issues in the House – "samose ke daam pe sawal", or queries on the price of samosas – while remaining silent on matters that could hold the government to account.
Chadha had skipped opposition walkouts, Bharadwaj pointed out. He had declined to participate in a motion against the Chief Election Commissioner. He had said nothing while party leaders were being sent to jail. "Yeh PR politics nahi chalegi," Bharadwaj said flatly.
Chadha's chosen issues, like delivery app grievances, airport food costs, prepaid mobile recharges are real enough and they attract attention. And they are, crucially, issues that have little political cost. They do not call for standing up to the government in any serious way. They do not require party loyalty when it's hard. They produce coverage, sympathy and an individual fan base. What they don't do, in AAP's accounting, is help the party's gain political capital.
And in a party that has spent much of the past three years watching its leadership getting paraded through courtrooms and cell blocks, the difference between useful parliamentary business and personal brand-building seems to have become a bitter one.
Not surprisingly, therefore, fellow Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh carried on in the same tone. "Raghav Chadha ji, you are scared of Modi,” he said in a video. “You did not sign the proposal against the CEC. You remained silent on the voting rights issue in West Bengal. You did not raise your voice on the issue of misuse in the Delhi elections. You stayed quiet on the Punjab issues. AAP workers were attacked in Gujarat, and even on that you said nothing.”
Chadha, party circles pointed out, had gone conspicuously quiet after a court cleared party seniors Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in the Delhi excise policy case in February, a moment the party had treated as a collective vindication demanding visible celebration. Chadha offered neither. He skipped a Kejriwal press conference. He was absent from a jan sabha at Jantar Mantar.
The microphone apparently had not been snatched from Chadha on impulse. It had been coming. AAP leader and leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly Atishi brought up the matter of Chadha's absence since the arrest of Kejriwal: "When Arvind Kejriwal ji was arrested, you were in London getting eye surgery. Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party workers were out on the streets, going to jail, fighting to protect democracy and the Constitution," she said in her video. "Do you speak on issues concerning the common man or are you just building your own image?"
Chadha was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2022 as its youngest member aged 33 years after AAP took power in Punjab. He was telegenic, fluent and able to hold forth in the Upper House – attributes that the party was quite happy to use.
On March 27, he questioned the commerce and industry ministry on how Indian exporters were being protected from disadvantages in tariffs. He had expressed Budget grievances over taxes inflicted on middle-class families, proposed blockchain-based land registries, argued the case for regulating cryptocurrency and raised food adulteration as a public health crisis.
But AAP was keeping a different score: walkouts joined, motions supported, solidarity shown when the leadership was under siege. On that count, Chadha was running a deficit.
The young MP’s issues were seen as his own. His silences, at the moments that counted, were also his own. Bharadwaj made this explicit and left little room for interpretation. “Aap Rajya Sabha MP hain Punjab se, lekin Punjab ke muddon pe aapki awaaz nahi niklti," he said. This feud is no longer internal. Senior party figures have spoken on camera, in irreconcilable terms.
AAP, a party that built its identity on anti-establishment politics, is now managing a very establishment-style falling-out. Indian politics is replete with this script. When a party fields the big guns to publicly attack one of its own, it is a familiar sign, more often than not, that someone's days in that party are numbered.
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