The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) suffered a major setback on Saturday as eight MLAs who had quit the party a day before along with some party councillors, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with only four days to go for the February 5 Delhi Assembly elections.
The eight AAP MLAs include Bhavana Gaur, a two-time MLA from Palam, Madan Lal, a three-time MLA from Kasturba Nagar, Girish Soni a three-time MLA, Rajesh Rishi, a two-time MLA, Naresh Yadav, Pawan Sharma, BS Joon, Rohit Mehroliya and Bijendra Garg, a former MLA. Ajay Rai, who was an AAP councillor also joined the BJP.
The MLAs while resigning on Friday cited reasons like alleged corruption and the Arvind Kejriwal-led party's deviation from its ideology. All the eight legislators were denied poll tickets by the AAP this time.
After resigning from the AAP, they said they had also sent their resignation letters to the Assembly speaker, relinquishing their membership of the House.
Former AAP MLA Vijender Garg and several other leaders of the Kejriwal-led party too joined the saffron outfit in the presence of Baijayant Panda, its national vice-president and the in-charge of the Delhi BJP, 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.