A day after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) removed Raghav Chadha as its deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, the MP from Punjab warned his party not to take his silence for a defeat — because he was the “river that turns into a flood when it is time”.

In response, senior AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj mocked Chadha for avoiding taking on the BJP, telling him “jo darr gaya samjho marr gaya” — those who are afraid are as good as dead.

AAP leaders spoke of the “logical possibility” of Chadha joining the BJP, and accused the MP of trying to “enhance his profile in Rajya Sabha” at a time when his party faced an existential crisis after the arrest of almost all its top leaders in connection with the alleged liquor scam in Delhi.

His alleged “self-promotion” at the cost of the party and his “six-month disappearance” following Kejriwal’s arrest last year contributed to the decision to remove him from the post, AAP leaders said.

“One of the biggest factors appears to have been Chadha’s behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to get himself designated as the AAP’s leader in Rajya Sabha when Sanjay [Singh] ji was behind bars following his arrest in the excise policy case in October 2023. When this failed, he went to Punjab, where he started throwing his weight around and interfered in government matters by citing his closeness to the national leadership in Delhi,” an AAP leader said.

Another senior AAP leader said Chadha was removed as deputy leader in the Upper House following a “clarification” on the time allotted to MPs to speak in the House.

“We were under the impression that Chadha was being allotted time by the Chair in his capacity as an ordinary member of the House. But it was recently conveyed to us that he was engaging in self-promotion on the total time allotted to the party’s 10 MPs,” this leader said.

Earlier on Friday, Chadha published a video titled “Silenced, not defeated: My message to the ‘aam aadmi’”, in which he accused the AAP of muzzling him.

“Did I commit a crime; do something wrong? …The Aam Aadmi Party has told the Rajya Sabha Secretariat that Raghav Chadha be prohibited from speaking in Parliament … Why would someone want to stop me from speaking?” he asked in the video.

“Whenever I talk, I speak about the country’s aam aadmi (common man); I spoke about expensive food at airports, the problems of delivery partners…; I raised the issue of impure food, spoke of loot from toll plazas… All this benefited the aam aadmi of this country,” he said, thanking his supporters for their “unlimited love and encouragement”.

Addressing his party directly, Chadha said, “Do not interpret my silence as defeat, I am the river that turns into a flood when it is time.”

AAP Delhi chief and former Delhi minister Saurabh Bharadwaj responded with his own video titled “Jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya”.

“As Arvind Kejriwalji’s soldiers all of us had learned one thing — jo darr gaya, samjho marr gaya. We were supposed to raise the issues of the people while looking the government of the day straight in the eye… The government does not care about soft PR in Parliament… Raising larger national issues is more important than speaking about samosas,” Bhardwaj said.

He accused Chadha of not signing the Opposition’s notice to introduce a motion to remove Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar at a time when “bona fide voters [are allegedly] getting removed [from the electoral rolls]”.

“You do not walk out when the Opposition does, you did not raise any issue demanding answers from the government or the Prime Minister; how will politics work with such fear?” Bharadwaj said.

“[When] most of our leaders were in jail; Arvind Kejriwalji…was arrested in a false case, you were not in the country and in hiding somewhere… for the sake of the nation, we need to raise issues fearlessly and courageously while looking at the BJP in the eye,” he said.

“The BJP”, Bharadwaj said, “has been supporting you on social media since yesterday. You should think about this and see where you started from and where you have reached, what the country actually needs and how you can do better.”

Chadha responded with a second video later in the day, which included footage of him raising matters such as high tax rates, demand for a law to dismiss elected representatives, and joblessness.

Other AAP leaders also took aim at Chadha.

Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann replied in the affirmative when asked at a press conference in Chandigarh if he believed that Chadha was “compromised”. Mann also questioned why the MP was raising issues such as “samosas at airports” instead of the minimum support price (MSP) for agricultural produce and the alleged unfair deletion of voters from electoral rolls.

Former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi told The Indian Express that the action against Chadha was “something that had been building up for a while”, and that the party had given him a very long rope.

“…When someone within the party does not go by the party line, you give them the benefit of the doubt first. You give them more chances,” Atishi said. “This has been going on…from the time of the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal. His (Chadha’s) total absence since then. But the party did not break the relationship with him. There was an off-and-on involvement… We never said anything against him.”

“But the fact is that all of this was building up,” she said. “And recently several instances have happened… like the impeachment motion for example, and his refusal to sign…; the issue of walkouts…”

All of this, Atishi said, “sort of made it clear that he was not willing to speak anything against the BJP… At the core of our party’s ideology is the fight for democracy. How can someone be the deputy leader [of the AAP] in the Upper House if they’re not willing to take on the BJP?”

Atishi said it appeared that Chadha had reached “some kind of a compromise with the BJP”. “Because if you see, it is not as though he is not speaking… He is speaking on issues. He is just not speaking on any issues against the BJP,” she said.

In a post on social media, AAP national media incharge Anurag Dhanda said: “We are Kejriwal’s soldiers. Fearlessness is our first identity. If someone fears Modi, will they fight for the country? In Parliament, the party gets just a little time to speak — in that, we can either struggle to save the nation or push to make samosas cheaper in the airport canteen.”

Dhanda accused Chadha of not protesting the alleged police crackdown against AAP workers in Gujarat, and of not criticising the Election Commission’s alleged unfair actions in West Bengal. In Parliament, “When the opposition walked out of the House, he (Chadha) stayed back to mark attendance for Modiji,” Dhanda said.

Chadha declined to comment on the allegations levelled by AAP leaders.

Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva came out in support of Chadha, and alleged that Kejriwal was a “scared” leader who could not “tolerate any capable person” in his party.

“Raghav Chadha should have broken his silence long ago. Kejriwal has a pattern — he first uses people and then gets rid of them,” Sachdeva said.

On whether Chadha might join the BJP, Sachdeva said: “A lot of leaders have left AAP in the past but have not joined BJP. But it is up to him (Chadha). He has to decide his future.”