All is well in AAP? Ashok Mittal replaces Raghav Chadha as party's deputy leader in Rajya Sabha
The Aam Aadmi Party has written to the Rajya Sabha secretariat seeking the removal of Raghav Chadha as the party's deputy leader in the House.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has formally written to the Rajya Sabha secretariat seeking the removal of Raghav Chadha as its deputy leader in the Upper House, a party spokesperson told Livemint.
Chadha's replacement, Ashok Mittal, is also the founder and chancellor of Lovely Professional University. Mittal joined active politics after the 2022 Punjab election, when he was nominated by the Aam Aadmi Party for the Rajya Sabha.
AAP writes to Rajya Sabha secretariat, recommends leadership change
The Aam Aadmi Party has formally written to the Rajya Sabha secretariat seeking Chadha’s removal from the deputy leadership position, a spokesperson confirmed. Ashok Mittal, a Rajya Sabha member from Punjab and chairman of Lovely Professional University, is expected to assume the role.
The communication also recommends that Chadha should no longer be allotted speaking time under AAP’s quota in the House—a move that underscores the extent of the proposed change.
AAP currently holds 10 seats in the Rajya Sabha, including seven members from Punjab and three from Delhi.
Raghav Chadha’s parliamentary record and public interventions
Raghav Chadha, a Rajya Sabha member since April 2022, has remained an active parliamentary voice, frequently raising social and economic issues.
Last month, the AAP MP highlighted concerns over the practice of “sarpanch pati” or “panchayat pati”, where women elected to reserved seats are often reduced to figureheads while male relatives exercise authority. He called for stricter enforcement of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment to ensure genuine empowerment.
He has also drawn attention to menstrual hygiene, describing it as a matter of “health, education and equality” affecting over 35 crore women and girls. Chadha argued that if a girl misses school due to lack of sanitation facilities, “it is not her personal problem but a collective failure”, adding that society has turned “a biological fact into a social taboo”.
During a period of unrest among gig workers, Chadha spent a day working as a delivery partner to better understand the challenges faced by the sector. He has also spoken on issues ranging from airport food prices to urban traffic congestion and labour protections.
Chadha has been in the news recently for raising public-centric issues in the Rajya Sabha. The latest issue he spoke about was a demand to make paternity leave legal in India. He also took up the cause of gig workers and traffic issues in top Indian cities like Delhi and Bengaluru.
Raghav Chadha's economic concerns amid global turbulence
In March, Raghav Chadha raised concerns over the impact of the West Asia conflict on Indian markets, citing a sharp erosion in investor wealth.
“It is a Black Swan event because it has been triggered suddenly, externally and it is unrelated to the underlying Indian economic fundamentals,” he said during a discussion in the Rajya Sabha.
He noted heightened volatility in global financial markets, with ripple effects on India’s economy, and urged the government to consider relief measures for retail investors.
Signs of political distance fuel speculation
The leadership change comes against the backdrop of growing speculation that Chadha has distanced himself from the party’s core political messaging following AAP’s defeat in the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections.
Once a close confidante of Arvind Kejriwal, Chadha was not on good terms with the AAP leadership of late. Some reports suggested he was on the way to joining the Bharatiya Janata Party, though there has not been any official word on this.
Reports of his on-off relationship with AAP gained traction after the party last week dropped Chadha from its list of star campaigners for the upcoming Assembly elections.
Many had raised doubts about his ties with top AAP leadership after Raghav Chadha did not comment when a Delhi court discharged former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his then-deputy Manish Sisodia in an excise police-related corruption case in February, refusing to take cognisance of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chargesheet.
Chadha was an MLA from Delhi before being sent to the Rajya Sabha by AAP. He has also been the party's Punjab in-charge.
Who is Ashok Mittal?
Ashok Mittal, who is poised to step into the deputy leadership role, has been a Rajya Sabha member from Punjab since April 2022. He has served on several key parliamentary committees, including those on defence and finance, and was recently inducted into the India–US Parliamentary Friendship Group.
Ashok Mittal was also part of an all-party delegation led by DMK MP Kanimozhi that visited multiple European countries following the Pahalgam terror attack last year.
Mittal, when asked, said such changes in leadership positions are a continuous process. “Earlier, ND Gupta ji was Deputy Leader, then Raghav ji took over, and now I have been given the responsibility. Tomorrow, someone else may get the opportunity,” he told news agency PTI.
On speculation about Raghav Chadha leaving the party, he adds, “These are just rumours; such things keep circulating and should not be given importance.”
(With PTI inputs)
About the Authors
Gulam Jeelani is Political Desk Editor at LiveMint with over 16 years of experience covering national and international politics. Based in New Delhi, Jeelani delivers impactful political narratives through breaking stories, in-depth interviews, and analytical pieces at LiveMint since February 2024. The expertise in video production fuels his current responsibilities, which include curating content and conducting video interviews for an expanding digital audience.<br><br> Jeelani also travels during elections and key political events and has covered assembly elections in key states apart from national elections. He has previously worked with The Pioneer, Network18, India Today, News9Plus and Hindustan Times.<br><br> Jeelani’s tenure at LiveMint and previous experience at print and digital newsrooms have honed his skills in creating compelling text and video stories, explainers, and analysis that resonate with a diverse viewership.<br><br> Before moving to New Delhi in 2015, Jeelani was based in Uttar Pradesh, where he worked for five years as a reporter. In 2018, Jeelani was one of the two Indian journalists selected for the Alfred Friendly Fellowship in the US. There, he attended training workshops on reporting and data journalism, and he was attached to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in Minnesota, where he worked as a reporter.<br><br> Jeelani is a Bachelor's in Chemistry and holds a Masters Degree in journalism and mass communication from Aligarh Muslim University. Outside work, he enjoys poetry, cricket and movies.
Sayantani Biswas is an assistant editor at Livemint with seven years of experience covering geopolitics, foreign policy, international relations and global power dynamics. She reports on Indian and international politics, including elections worldwide, and specialises in historically grounded analysis of contemporary conflicts and state decisions. She joined Mint in 2021, after covering politics at publications including The Telegraph. <br> She holds an MPhil in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University (2019), with a specialisation in postcolonial Latin American literature. Her research examined economic nationalism through Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America. She also writes on political language, cultural memory and the long shadows of conflict. <br> Biswas grew up in Durgapur, an industrial town in West Bengal shaped by migration, which drew families from across India to the Durgapur Steel Plant. As the only child in a joint family, she spent years listening—almost obsessively—to her grandparents’ testimonies of struggle, fear and loss as they fled Bangladesh during the Partition of 1947. This formative exposure to lived historical memory later converged with her training in Comparative Literature, equipping her to analyse socio-economic structures and their reverberations. <br> Outside the newsroom, she gravitates towards cultural history and critical theory, returning often to texts such as Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As a journalist, she is committed to accuracy, intellectual rigour and fairness, and believes political reporting demands not only clarity and speed, but historical depth, contextual precision, and a disciplined resistance to spectacle.
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