The latent but evident tension between Raghav Chadha and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came to a head on Thursday with the party removing him as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha.Chadha, 37, has been replaced with Ashok Mittal, founder and chancellor of Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, who downplayed dissent as the reason behind the switch and framed the change as part of a democratic process wherein the party assigns responsibilities to leaders.AAP today communicated the replacement of Chadha to the Rajya Sabha secretariat in a letter which also mentions non-allotment of party quota time to him in the House. Mittal, however, said earlier ND Gupta was deputy leader, then Chadha and now him and that this was all routine. “Our party wants all MPs to learn,” Mittal said. But there is obviously more to the move than meets the eye.The timing of the move itself is key. It came days after AAP Rajya Sabha leader Sanjay Singh dismissed speculation that Chadha might join the BJP ahead of the Punjab elections in 2027.A blue-eyed boy of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal for years, Chadha has grown progressively distant from AAP starting 2024, when he was conspicuous by his absence at the time of Kejriwal’s arrest in the Delhi excise scam matter.His absence was noted and the party downplayed it saying he was in London to treat a major eye issue.Even when Chadha returned, his alienation from AAP, party agenda and programmes and its leaders continued. Chadha did not even make a statement welcoming a recent Delhi court discharging Kejriwal and 21 others in the excise matter — a development AAP hailed as an endorsement of its “kattar imandar” image.The distance between Chadha and AAP has been a matter of discussion in Delhi political circles, especially because in May 2023, the MP’s engagement with actor Parineeti Chopra took place at Kapurthala House, the official residence of Punjab Chief Minister in Delhi.The only other time this opulent home was opened for a private ceremony was on April 18, 2025 for the wedding of Kejriwal’s daughter Harshita with Sambhav Jain.”So obviously up until 2023 all was well and things started changing from 2024,” a source said, reflecting on Chadha’s meteoric rise and fall in AAP.Associated with Kejriwal in 2012, when the Delhi Lokpal Bill was being drafted, Chadha went on to become AAP’s national spokesman, youngest treasurer, 2019 Lok Sabha poll candidate (he lost the election), Delhi assembly MLA from Rajinder Nagar in 2020 and finally the youngest Rajya Sabha MP in 2022.He was also AAP’s Punjab co-incharge with Jarnail Singh starting 2020 and after the party’s landmark 2022 win went on to become the adviser to CM Bhagwant Singh Mann. He was sent to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab in 2022 where he even led the party and was later made deputy leader under Sanjay Singh.But matters soured starting 2024 with Chadha staying away from AAP politics and focusing on people’s issues in the Rajya Sabha.A section within AAP began to feel that he was treating himself as bigger than the party. That said, Chadha’s parliamentary interventions — on the need for affordable airport cafes, paternity leave, rights of gig workers, policies for menstrual health and more have — resonated. After he raised the need for low cost food at airports and rights of gig workers, the BJP-led NDA government opened 11 UDAN Yatri cafes across airports where tea is available for Rs 10 and samosa for Rs 20. The Government also asked food delivery firms to drop the 10-minute delivery rule.