It is doubtless painful to see seven Rajya Sabha MPs from the AAP renounce their party and join the BJP. The media presented it as something so shocking that it upturned reality. However, was it actually so astonishing? A bitter brew had been simmering beneath the surface with fumes in plain sight.

What is even more agonising for the AAP is that some of the defectors were the party's poster boys (and girls). Raghav Chadha, Sandeep Pathak, and Swati Maliwal were very much synonymous with the AAP. In a way, these MPs put forth a perfect demonstration of the falsehood and opportunism that are the hallmarks of the events leading to, and the inception and character of the AAP.

While Swati Maliwal's exit was written in stone after she accused Bibhav Kumar, a close aide to AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal, of assaulting her at the then-Chief Minister's official residence in Delhi on May 13, 2024, it is surprising that she continued for a whole two years. She has also had a confrontative attitude towards the party's leadership and her confrères. Her criticisms of Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann immediately come to mind.

Raghav Chadha had also been showing significant aberrations since the party's defeat in Delhi. He was increasingly alienating himself from the party, as evidenced by his disregard for party matters and delayed/or hesitant responses to events, such as his lack of public reaction when Kejriwal and Sisodia were acquitted in the Delhi excise policy case. It probably was the final nail in the coffin when he was deposed as the Deputy Leader amid rumours of internal differences within the party. Hilariously, Ashok Mittal, who replaced Chadha as the Deputy Leader, also turned traitor.

Yet, while the defections are morally indefensible, they are not ideologically surprising. The AAP itself was born from a politics of relentless disruption and convenient morality. It rose to prominence by portraying every opponent as irredeemably corrupt while presenting itself as uniquely virtuous. Ironically, the very party that mocked the Congress for losing legislators to the BJP now finds its own senior faces embracing the saffron fold. The broom that promised to cleanse politics has merely swept its own dust under the carpet.

The BJP, for its part, has once again demonstrated its extraordinary ability to convert political weakness into strategic gain. With Punjab elections less than a year away, weakening the AAP from within serves the BJP's long-term ambitions in the state. Questions have also emerged regarding whether economic and investigative pressures played a role in nudging these MPs towards the ruling alliance. Such suspicions are not unusual, given the businesses of some of these MPs and their gains from turning others into turncoats.

More worrying, however, is the continued attrition of the anti-defection framework. The Tenth Schedule was intended to prevent precisely this kind of betrayal of public mandate. Yet constitutional provisions are repeatedly interpreted according to political convenience. Even the judiciary cannot be trusted to uphold proper justice, as seen from its previous responses in such cases.

In the end, this episode is not merely about the collapse of discipline within the AAP. It is another grim reminder that Indian democracy continues to suffer from opportunism without accountability, defections without shame, and institutions without sufficient courage to resist political expediency.