A day after he quit as Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Uttarakhand unit president and gave up party membership, Deepak Bali on Tuesday joined BJP in the presence of Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami and BJP state president Madan Kaushik at the party office here.

AAP’s CM candidate for the recent Assembly elections, Colonel Ajay Kothiyal (Retd), and former state working president Bhupesh Upadhyay had earlier quit and joined BJP last month, along with several other AAP members.

On Monday, Bali resigned from the party and posted his resignation letter on Twitter. In the letter addressed to AAP chief and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, and marked to party’s state in-charge Dinesh Mohaniya, Bali stated that he was feeling uncomfortable with the work culture of AAP and thus decided to leave the party. Joining BJP, he thanked CM Dhami and BJP state chief Kaushik.

आम आदमी पार्टी के सभी दायित्वों एवं प्राथमिक सदस्यता से इस्तीफा । pic.twitter.com/Tr8tGbMHAV

— Deepak Bali (@TheDeepakBali) June 13, 2022

Stating that the BJP will “gain strength” with Bali joining the party, Dhami claimed that AAP stands “all clear” from Uttarakhand now.

“Before starting my political career, I worked in social and business life,” Bali stated in his resignation letter. “After joining AAP, I fulfilled all duties given to me. Today I am joining the BJP. Young and visionary Pushkar Singh Dhami has the leadership of the state and the way he took decisions in his first tenure, I used to feel we will not be able to stop BJP. The way he registered a victory in Champawat by-election by getting over 92 percent votes, there is nothing left to say.”

“The way Dhami-ji is working for the welfare of the state, it was bothering me that I will do politics of opposing [him] just because I am in a different political party. As far as AAP is concerned, I was disheartened by an incident four days ago. The video of an incident in Pakistan, where a Hindu woman was pulled by the hair and a Hanuman temple was demolished, went viral. The silence of AAP’s top leadership troubled me. And then I realised that just taking the name of nationalism isn’t enough.”

भाजपा की कार्यशैली से प्रभावित होकर आम आदमी पार्टी के निवर्तमान प्रदेश अध्यक्ष श्री दीपक बाली जी द्वारा आज भारतीय जनता पार्टी की सदस्यता ग्रहण करने पर मैं उनका स्वागत व अभिनंदन करता हूं।@BJP4India @BJP4UK pic.twitter.com/NBWhVK4fgg

— Pushkar Singh Dhami (@pushkardhami) June 14, 2022

Dhami welcomed Bali to BJP and said that he has been known as a bright student leader, a successful businessman, and a leader. “Even though he was in AAP, nationalism was always in his ideology. He saw the real face of AAP from inside. Saddened by that, he said goodbye to AAP and joined BJP after being inspired by the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”

With Bali also leaving, problems for AAP appear to be growing in Uttarakhand. At present, the party neither has a face for the public nor a leader to head the state unit, and thereby faces an uphill task to reestablish itself in the hill-state by starting from scratch.

In the recent Assembly elections, AAP failed to convince the people about what it calls the ‘Delhi model of good governance’ and promises of free water and power in the state. The party failed to win a single seat and secured only 3.31 per cent votes — finishing fourth in terms of vote share, after BJP (44.33%), Congress (37.91%), and BSP (4.82%). Even the party’s CM candidate, Kothiyal, who contested from Gangotri seat, got only 6,161 votes, trailing BJP candidate Suresh Singh Chauhan (29,619 votes) and Congress’s Vijaypal Singh Sajwan (21, 590 votes).