How Raghav Chadha's 2022 proposed bill could have stopped his 2026 switch to BJP from AAP

On 5 August 2022, Chadha, then a trusted aide of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, introduced a Constitution Amendment Bill as a Private Member's Bill, calling for a tougher anti-defection law. The Bill proposed raising the threshold required for a legitimate party split from two-thirds to three-fourths of a party's legislative strength.

There is a certain irony in politics that rarely surfaces so cleanly. Four years ago, Raghav Chadha walked into the Rajya Sabha as its youngest member and, within three months, proposed a Bill that, had it become law, would have made his own defection from the AAP this week either impossible or significantly harder to pull off. On 5 August 2022, Chadha, then a trusted aide of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, introduced a Constitution Amendment Bill as a Private Member's Bill, calling for a tougher anti-defection law. The Bill proposed raising the threshold required for a legitimate party split from two-thirds to three-fourths of a party's legislative strength.

Fast forward to this week. Chadha announced his exit from the AAP along with six other party members in the Rajya Sabha, citing a two-thirds majority of the party's House strength of ten. Under the existing law, seven members constitute the two-thirds threshold required to engineer a valid merger. Chadha had exactly that, six colleagues plus himself.

Had his own Bill been law, he would have needed seven colleagues, not six, to cross over. The present group of seven would have fallen short.

Also Read: Party switch and 1 Million followers gone: How Gen Z responded to Raghav Chadha's move to BJP

What the Bill actually said

The proposed legislation was aimed squarely at what Chadha described at the time as "nefarious floor crossing by legislators in total disregard of the democratic wishes of the electorate who returned them." Its stated purpose was to strengthen the Tenth Schedule of the Constitution, which governs the disqualification of elected representatives on grounds of defection.

Beyond raising the merger threshold, the Bill carried two additional provisions that make its resurfacing this week all the more pointed. It proposed that any MP or MLA who changed party after winning an election be banned from contesting elections for six years. It also sought to prevent what it called "Resort Politics" by requiring elected representatives to appear before the Chair within seven days of withdrawing support from a government, with disqualification as the consequence for failing to do so.

The Bill also sought amendments to Articles 102 and 191 of the Constitution to give these provisions legal teeth.

Also Read: How Raghav Chaddha’s move to BJP may sidestep the Defection Law; Why number 7 matters

The numbers that tell the story

Under the anti-defection law as it currently stands, AAP's Rajya Sabha strength of ten means that a minimum of seven members, two-thirds, are required to engineer a recognised split. Chadha's group of seven meets at that bar precisely.

Under the Bill that Chadha himself tabled in 2022, the threshold would have been three-fourths, meaning eight of AAP's ten Rajya Sabha members would have been required. His current group would not have qualified. And even if it had, every one of them would have faced a six-year bar from contesting any election.

The Bill never passed. It remains listed against Chadha's name in the Rajya Sabha records, a proposal he made as a young legislator calling for stronger democratic accountability, at a time when he could not have imagined it would one day be cited in the context of his own political exit.