Aam Aadmi Party leader Sanjay Singh on Sunday said that he has submitted a petition to Rajya Sabha Chairperson CP Radhakrishnan seeking the disqualification of seven AAP MPs in the Rajya Sabha who have announced their merger with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

The AAP had 10 members in the Rajya Sabha before the split and has three MPs in the Lok Sabha.

Addressing a press conference, Singh said that the move by the seven MPs amounted to defection and violated the anti-defection law.

On Friday, AAP MP Raghav Chadha announced that seven of the party’s 10 Rajya Sabha MPs were merging with the BJP. He claimed that two-thirds of AAP’s members in the Upper House supported the move, which he said was in line with constitutional provisions allowing such a merger.

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Chadha made the announcement at a press conference with AAP MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal. However, he claimed that other AAP MPs Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Swati Maliwal were supporting the decision to merge with the BJP. Except Maliwal, all other MPs had been elected from Punjab, where the AAP is in power.

On Sunday, Singh, however, termed the development a “betrayal of the people’s mandate”, particularly in Punjab.

“These members were elected by the AAP and later chose to leave and join another party,” Singh said. “This is a betrayal of the people of Punjab and also of the Constitution of India.”

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He said the AAP had consulted constitutional experts, including Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal and a former Lok Sabha secretary general on the matter, and it had been made clear that “the MPs were liable for disqualification under the law”. “

He also dismissed claims that AAP MLAs in Punjab were in touch with Chadha, calling them “misinformation and rumours”.