New Delhi, April 27 (IANS). Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday welcomed 7 Rajya Sabha members who joined BJP from Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Rijiju said that those MPs never used abusive language or indulged in indiscipline in the House.
The incident occurred after the Rajya Sabha on Monday released a new list of party posts as seven Aam Aadmi Party members announced their departure from the party and joining the BJP.
With this change, BJP’s representation in the House increased from 107 to 113, while Aam Aadmi Party’s representation decreased to three.
The defecting leaders – Raghav Chadha, Swati Maliwal, Harbhajan Singh, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Rajinder Gupta and Vikram Sawhney – last week revealed their decision to leave the Aam Aadmi Party and join the BJP.
Rijiju wrote on social media platform
Praising their conduct in Parliament, the minister said, “I have observed for a long time that these 7 MPs have never used abusive language nor displayed any kind of indiscipline or unparliamentary conduct.”
Welcoming him to the BJP, he said, “Welcome to the nation-building NDA under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and goodbye to the tukde-tukde India block.”
This move further strengthened the BJP’s presence in the upper house of Parliament. Now Aam Aadmi Party is represented in Rajya Sabha by only three members – Sanjay Singh, Narayan Das Gupta and Sant Balbir Singh.
The group of defectors included two-thirds majority of Aam Aadmi Party’s Rajya Sabha members.
According to the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which was added by the 52nd Amendment in 1985, members cannot defect, however, there is an exception for “defection”.
If two-thirds of the elected members of a party agree to merge with another party, they are not disqualified, nor are those members who choose to remain in the parent party disqualified. Chadha and six other people cited this rule as the reason behind joining BJP.
–IANS
SAK/VC
