‘AAP’s broom has scattered’: Kunwar Vijay Pratap, two other Punjab MLAs join BJP

Chandigarh. Three Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs who broke away from the ruling party in Punjab joined the BJP in New Delhi on Monday, giving the saffron party a big boost ahead of the February Assembly elections.

BJP’s Punjab in-charge Satish Poonia welcomed Amritsar North MLA Kunwar Vijay Pratap Singh, Samana MLA Chetan Singh Jouramajra and Sanaur MLA Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra into the party. Punjab BJP president Kewal Singh Dhillon and several senior state leaders were present.

Taking a dig at AAP’s election symbol, Dhillon said, “Good leaders are leaving the Aam Aadmi Party. The broom has now scattered.” He said AAP had “wasted five years of Punjab” and cheated its people, and that the BJP would “stand like a rock” with the three leaders.

‘Gangsters made part of govt’

Kunwar launched a sharp attack on the Bhagwant Mann government. “Drugs are at their peak in Punjab. Extortion has become an industry and gangsterism is at its peak,” he said.

“I have been a police officer and I am still deposing in courts as one. Gangsters are being made part of the Punjab government. Nothing can be more shameful than this,” he said.

He said unemployment was at its highest, industry had collapsed and the state was running on loans. “Punjab is fighting for its existence today,” he said, adding that he joined the BJP after seeing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attachment to the people of Punjab.

Winnable faces

The BJP is contesting the Punjab polls on its own and has struggled to find strong candidates across the state’s 117 seats. The three new entrants, despite their troubled pasts with AAP, have a firm hold in their constituencies. Kunwar won Amritsar North in 2022 by over 28,000 votes, while Jouramajra is a former minister in the Mann government.

The party has long leaned on leaders from other parties in Punjab. Dhillon himself is a former two-time Congress MLA, and his predecessor, Sunil Jakhar, once headed the Punjab Congress. After Congress, the BJP is now drawing from AAP, and more leaders left out of AAP’s candidate lists could follow.

AAP plays it down

AAP has dismissed the exits. Senior party leader Baltej Pannu said Jouramajra and Pathanmajra had already been sidelined by the party, while Kunwar had been suspended long ago, so their move makes little difference to AAP.

All three quit on Sunday. Kunwar resigned his Assembly seat, while Jouramajra and Pathanmajra resigned from AAP’s primary membership. AAP had left the two out of its first list of 40 candidates on Saturday and had already named new constituency in-charges in Samana and Sanaur. On Sunday morning, it suspended both for anti-party activities and said it will ask the Speaker to cancel their Assembly membership.

Kunwar’s long rift

Kunwar, who hails from Bihar, is a 1998-batch IPS officer of the Punjab cadre. He headed the SIT that probed the 2015 Kotkapura police firing. After the Punjab and Haryana High Court quashed his probe report in April 2021, he took premature retirement and joined AAP.

His differences with the party began soon after he became an MLA. In January 2023, he quit as chairman of the Assembly’s committee on government assurances, unhappy with how the sacrilege and Behbal Kalan firing cases were being handled. In June 2025, AAP suspended him for five years after he questioned the Vigilance Bureau’s arrest of Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia.

The Speaker will now decide on all three: Kunwar’s resignation and AAP’s plea to disqualify Jouramajra and Pathanmajra.