Gahlot is the second sitting cabinet minister to quit AAP

Najafgarh legislator Kailash Gahlot, who resigned from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Sunday afternoon, is the second senior cabinet minister to quit the party this year.
Earlier, on April 10, social welfare minister Raaj Kumar Anand had quit the AAP, alleging that had joined the party to fight corruption, but its leaders had “ended up trapped in corruption”. In addition, Anand’s predecessor Rajendra Pal Gautam — who stepped down in November 2022 after his presence at a religious conversion event sparked a political controversy in Delhi — also quit the party this year, on September 6.
After Anand’s resignation, the AAP had linked his quitting the party to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and pressure from federal agencies. “This (his resignation) proves that the BJP’s target is to break the AAP. Raaj Kumar Anand was raided by the ED and all BJP leaders called him corrupt,” AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh had said at the time.
The party had also brushed off Gautam’s resignation as a political decision.
However, Gahlot’s quitting the party will likely hit the AAP much harder, coming as it does just a few months before the Delhi assembly polls.
Gahlot is a popular Jat leader from southwest Delhi, and over the past year, there have been growing murmurs about his disaffection with the AAP — for example, he was conspicuous by his absence during the AAP’s campaign trail in the recent Haryana assembly elections.
The Najafgarh MLA was one of the most powerful ministers in the Delhi government as recently as March 2023, delivering the state budget for that fiscal, before many of his key portfolios — including finance and revenue — were transferred to Atishi in July 2023.
A senior party functionary said over the last six months, Gahlot had carried out a series of inaugurations of new bus routes, sports complex halls, and many local infrastructure projects in rural parts of southwest Delhi.
Unlike other party leaders, the two-time MLA has also not engaged in any public confrontation with lieutenant governor VK Saxena, and enjoys a cordial relationship with him. The two were seen engaging at public functions involving the transport department — one of the few portfolios Gahlot still held on to.
Earlier, on August 6, then chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who was incarcerated in Tihar jail, wrote to Saxena, saying Delhi’s senior-most minister Atishi will hoist the national flag at the Independence Day function at Chhatrasal stadium. However, the LG had in turn nominated Gahlot to unfurl the flag at the state-level celebrations, raising eyebrows in Delhi’s political landscape.
However, at that time, Gahlot had said Gahlot had hailed hails Kejriwal as modern-day freedom fighter in his independence day speech.
A second AAP functionary claimed that the two victories that Gahlot secured from the Najafgarh seat were by slim margins, and his performance would likely have been up for review for getting a party ticket for the upcoming elections.
“He won in 2015 by a margin of 1,555 votes and by 6,231 votes in 2020. The performance of the party from Najafgarh in the 2022 MCD elections was also very bad. Out of four wards under the assembly, three were won by BJP and one by independent, who also later joined BJP,” the functionary said.