Suspended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Col Devinder Kumar Sehrawat on Monday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) here.
Sehrawat, who represents South-west Delhi’s Bijwasan Assembly constituency, is the second AAP MLA to defect to the BJP in less than a week.
AAP’s Gandhi Nagar MLA Anil Bajpai had quit the party and switched to the BJP last Friday.
According to AAP sources, Sehrawat was suspended from the primary membership of the party in September 2016 following the allegations he had made publicly that AAP activists in Punjab were “exploiting women” in lieu of tickets for contesting the Assembly elections there.
He had, however, not resigned as an MLA.
Sehrawat, who declared his joining of the BJP at a press conference in the presence of senior Delhi BJP leaders Vijay Goel and Vijendra Gupta, accused the AAP of “ignoring” and “cornering” him in the party. He told reporters that he was “not even invited to party functions”.
He alleged, “I tried to work for the development of my constituency even after being suspended from the party but they (the AAP) tried to sabotage all my efforts.”
Sehrawat alleged, “I was one of the many legislators who were harassed routinely at meetings and in public. They ensured that I couldn’t do any development work in my constituency. They would not release funds for such work.”
He charged: “I joined AAP only for Jan Lokpal and raising my voice against corruption, but Kejriwal, who used to talk in the interest of farmers and the poor, now has become the greatest enemy of these sections.”
Union minister and senior Delhi BJP leader Vijay Goel had last week claimed that 14 AAP MLAs were in touch with his party and wanted to quit the AAP due to “frustration and humiliation”.