The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) suffered a setback on Wednesday as its lone Lok Sabha member Sushil Kumar Rinku, from Jalandhar parliamentary constituency in Punjab, along with legislator Sheetal Angural from Jalandhar West, quit the party and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) weeks ahead of the general elections.

The AAP had renominated Rinku as its candidate from Jalandhar for the elections on March 14. However, on Wednesday, Rinku and Angural visited the BJP headquarters in Delhi and joined the party in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri, party’s national general secretary Vinod Tawde and Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar.

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Rinku said he was joining the BJP for the development of Punjab, especially Jalandhar, and accused the state government of not helping him in development works. He said he was impressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, and lauded the Union government for its development initiatives.

“The people of Jalandhar made us victorious during the bypoll on an agenda for development but I feel disappointed that we could not do anything for them. All the promises made during the bypoll remain unfulfilled despite the tall claims of chief minister Bhagwant Mann and Delhi chief minister (and AAP convener) Arvind Kejriwal of changing the fortunes of Jalandhar,” Rinku said.

“I had multiple meetings with the chief minister (Mann) and local bodies minister Balkar Singh in the past but received no positive response. The AAP will be decimated in Jalandhar as they have nothing to offer to people of the constituency,” he added.

Rinku, who was earlier with the Congress, had joined the AAP just days before the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll on April 5, 2023. He recorded a landslide victory in the bypoll, getting 302,279 votes. The BJP candidate Inder Iqbal Singh Atwal, on the other hand, got 134,800 votes and finished in fourth place. The bypoll was necessitated after the death of the Congress’s Santokh Singh Chaudhary in January last year.

According to AAP functionaries aware of the details, Rinku was upset with the party leadership for allegedly ignoring his grievances over the development of his constituency, and not fulfilling promises such as setting up of a sports university and an industrial park made during the Jalandhar by-election. Last week, chief minister Bhagwant Mann even held a closed-door meeting with Rinku, the functionaries added.

Interestingly, Angural won the Jalandhar West assembly seat in the 2022 assembly elections defeating Rinku, who was with the Congress then. The two leaders remained at loggerheads till Rinku joined the AAP last year.

“It is a home coming for me as the BJP was my parent party. The AAP is not a party as Kejriwal and Mann are running an Aam Aadmi Company and working in a dictatorial manner,” Angural, who was earlier with the BJP but quit the party in 2021, said.

Both Rinku and Angural were in contact with senior BJP leaders for the past one month, functionaries said.

Jakhar said both Rinku and Angural joined the party due to the development works carried out by Modi.

“It is a failure of the AAP leadership, Mann and Kejriwal, that the two leaders left their party and joined the BJP. Rinku was the lone AAP MP but felt dejected and suffocated due to the AAP’s policies. They came to know that the AAP and Congress are working in connivance to deceive the people of Punjab in the upcoming elections,” Jakhar said.

State finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema recalled how Rinku was defeated by the people in the assembly polls in 2022, but the AAP made him an MP from Jalandhar.

“Both Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann campaigned for him and helped him achieve a massive victory. He turned out to be a traitor,” Cheema said.

The AAP is fighting to save democracy and the Constitution, but Rinku and Angural have betrayed the people of Punjab and “surrendered before a dictator”, Cheema said. “Their switch clearly shows their greed for power. The people will teach them a lesson,” he said.

AAP workers staged protests outside residences of Rinku and Angural in Jalandhar on Wednesday evening.