New Delhi: Former Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha who crossed over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in April, has accused his former party of “political vendetta” after his name was marked as “shifted” in the draft list of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Punjab. While Chadha has accused the AAP government in Punjab of taking “politics of revenge to the draft electoral rolls”, the party on the other hand has accused its former MP of attempting to get himself enrolled as a voter in Delhi “through a backdated process”.In a statement on X, Chadha alleged that being marked as “shifted” on the draft list in Punjab was not a “clerical mistake”.“This does not seem like a mere clerical mistake. This is a clear case of political vendetta.“Who marked me as ‘shifted’?“An official of AAP’s Punjab Government.“Who verified that classification?“Again, an officer of AAP’s Punjab Government.“Who processed it at higher level?“Once again, the same AAP’s Punjab Government official.”Beyond the blame game between the AAP and Chadha, his probable eventual exclusion could indicate jeopardy for his parliament seat. Section 3 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, says that to be eligible to be a member of the Rajya Sabha, a candidate must be registered as an elector in a – any – parliamentary constituency in the country. Responding to Chadha’s statement on X, the AAP said that he had been living in Delhi and not in Punjab and claimed that his exclusion from the rolls was a result of his own allegedly underhanded efforts to register himself in Delhi.“It is a matter of public record that Raghav Chadha has been living in Delhi and not in Punjab. If he no longer resides in Punjab, maintaining or shifting his voter registration was his own responsibility. He cannot now blame the AAP or the Punjab Government for the deletion of a voter entry,” the AAP statement quote tweeting Chadha said.“Raghav Chadha has been caught by a National Daily English Newspaper, trying to get his voter registration made in Delhi through a backdated process, and is now attempting to put the entire blame on the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Punjab government.”A senior Punjab government official told The Indian Express that Chadha’s allegations are “completely false” and that the Punjab government has no role to play in the exercise. “The CEO is an official appointed by the Election Commission of India”.The report notes how, in his affidavit for the 2022 Rajya Sabha elections, Chadha had declared that he was registered to vote in Booth Number 52 in Rajinder Nagar, Delhi.Express also reported that after he entered Rajya Sabha as an MP from Punjab, Chadha shifted his electoral registration to that state and voted in a booth in Punjab’s SAS Nagar, or Mohali, in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on June 1, 2024.At present, Chadha is not registered as a voter in either Delhi or Punjab. AAP’s Delhi president and former MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj alleged in a post on X that the Indian Express’s report was to have focused on the fact that Chadha’s name was being retrospectively added to Delhi’s voter list but that the paper nixed this angle for the report.“Unbelievable Raghav Chaddha might lose his Rajya Sabha because his vote got deleted in SIR.And @IndianExpress reporter got a tip-off that Raghav Chadha’s name was being added in the back date in Delhi’s voter list.When Indian Express asked this from ECI officials , this back channel process was immediately halted,” he wrote.He added: “However, Mr Raj Kamal Jha, the editor of Indian Express used his veto to drop this main part of the story. This was a major allegation that it was being tried that his name gets added into voter list in the back date. And it’s a crime to do manipulation in sacrosanct voter list.Mr @rajkamaljha is this not a shame for the legacy of newspaper like Indian Express ?”Before moving to the BJP, Chadha had been a prominent face of the AAP and was named joint in-charge of AAP’s Punjab unit in December 2020. The party had a landslide victory in the state in February 2022. Writing for The Wire, veteran journalist Prem Shankar Jha said that Chadha had been one of AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s “blue-eyed boys, and no defection has hurt him as much as his has.”Prior to his move to the BJP in April along with 6 other AAP MPs, the AAP had replaced him as the party’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.Speculation over Chadha’s move from the party had been growing even before that.Chadha did not publicly react after former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal along with former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and others were cleared of all charges by a Delhi court in the liquor excise policy case. Chadha was also absent during Kejriwal’s arrest ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and had later pinned his delayed response on recovery from an eye surgery in London.Chadha became a Rajya Sabha MP in 2022, and had another two years of his tenure to go when he moved to the BJP in April. He has been a national spokesperson for the AAP. In the 2020 Delhi assembly elections, he won the Rajendra Nagar constituency.For our full coverage on the SIR and the issues it has brought to citizens, click here.