Breaking: Controversy-hit AAP MLA’s Jouramajra, Pathanmajra quit party amid Akali Dal buzz

Chandigarh. Two Patiala MLAs, both with a long record of controversies, walked out of the Aam Aadmi Party on Sunday. They left a day after the party kept them off its first list of candidates for the 2027 polls.

Samana MLA and former minister Chetan Singh Jouramajra and Sanour MLA Harmeet Singh Pathanmajra quit AAP’s primary membership. Pathanmajra’s letter said he was quitting with immediate effect, but it did not say he was giving up his Assembly seat. Neither leader has officially said why he left or what he will do next.

“I, Chetan Singh Jouramajra, resign from the primary membership of the Aam Aadmi Party,” Jouramajra wrote on social media.

Akali Dal buzz

Political circles are buzzing that both MLAs may join the Shiromani Akali Dal. Neither the two leaders nor the Akali Dal has confirmed this.

There are signs pointing that way. Pathanmajra began his politics as a Youth Akali Dal leader, and in June, Akali chief Sukhbir Badal visited his house. Jouramajra’s old rival, former Akali minister Surjit Singh Rakhra, is now with AAP. Rakhra runs the party’s affairs in Samana, the seat Jouramajra won against him in 2022 by 39,713 votes.

Did their past cost them the ticket?

On Saturday, AAP named 40 candidates, all of them sitting MLAs. CM Bhagwant Mann had said earlier that no one was assured a ticket and that voter feedback and winnability would decide. The party says the MLAs it named came out ahead in its surveys.

Both men had been sidelined well before the list came out. AAP had already handed their seats to other leaders: Rakhra in Samana and Ranjodh Singh Hadana in Sanour. Their controversies may have weighed against them.

Jouramajra: from mattress row to Rakhra

In July 2022, as health minister, Jouramajra made Baba Farid University vice-chancellor Dr Raj Bahadur lie on a dirty hospital mattress. The VC resigned, and the IMA demanded an apology. Jouramajra lost the health department and was later given Information and Public Relations, Mining and Horticulture. In September 2024, he was dropped from the cabinet.

At a Sikhya Kranti event in Samana, he scolded a school principal in public. “There is nothing to call it a school,” he said. He apologised after education minister Harjot Bains criticised him.

In May, Mann brought Rakhra into AAP at a rally in Samana. In September, the party made Rakhra its Samana in-charge.

On October 27, five days before he quit, Jouramajra raised parole for Jagtar Singh Hawara in the Assembly. Hawara is serving a life term for the 1995 killing of former CM Beant Singh.

Pathanmajra: rape case, escape, jail

On September 1, 2025, Pathanmajra was booked for rape, cheating and criminal intimidation. A Zirakpur woman alleged that he told her he was divorced. The case came a day after he attacked his own government over its handling of the floods.

On September 2, he escaped from police in Karnal, and a policeman was hurt. He denied firing at the police and said he ran because he feared a fake encounter. While in hiding, he released videos attacking AAP’s Delhi leadership and taunted his fellow MLAs: “if people call you a flock of sheep, so be it.” AAP made Hadana its in-charge for Sanour.

He was declared a proclaimed offender and was arrested in Gwalior in March. He was the sixth AAP MLA arrested during Mann’s term. He got bail from the high court in May and walked out of Bathinda jail on May 31.

More than 50 AAP MLAs are still waiting to learn if they will get a ticket. Polls are expected in February 2027.