In a major political development ahead of the February 5 Delhi Assembly elections, eight outgoing AAP MLAs joined the BJP on Saturday. The MLAs had resigned from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday, citing issues such as alleged corruption and the party's departure from its core ideology.
All the eight legislators were denied poll tickets by the AAP this time. The eight MLAs who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are Vandana Gaur (Palam), Rohit Mehraulia (Trilokpuri), Girish Soni (Madipur), Madan Lal (Kasturba Nagar), Rajesh Rishi (Uttam Nagar), B S Joon (Bijwasan), Naresh Yadav (Mehrauli), and Pawan Sharma (Adarsh Nagar).
After resigning from the AAP, the eight MLAs stated that they had submitted their resignation letters to the Assembly Speaker, officially relinquishing their membership of the House. Former AAP MLA Vijender Garg, along with several other leaders from the Kejriwal-led party, also joined the BJP in the presence of Baijayant Panda, the national vice-president and Delhi BJP in-charge, and state president Virendra Sachdeva.
Welcoming the MLAs and leaders to the BJP, Panda said it is a "historic" day as they have gotten rid of "AAPda" (disaster) and hoped that after the February 5 polls, Delhi too will be freed from it.
The 70-member Delhi Assembly is scheduled to go to polls on February 5, with the results set to be declared on February 8.