Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday dubbed AAP’s Rajya Sabha members who quit the party and joined the BJP as “gaddars” (traitors).Addressing a hurriedly convened press conference here, Mann claimed the BJP, having “no base of its own in Punjab, was resorting to manipulations and intimidation through central agencies to buy leaders”. “The BJP has repeatedly faced rejection in Punjab and is now attempting to weaken a corruption-free government through intimidation, inducements and efforts to engineer defections,” he said.The CM claimed Raghav was the “BJP’s tool and was asked to lure seven Rajya Sabha MPs into the saffron party”. “He has been promised a ministerial berth for this service,” he said.Mann, who cut short his visit to the Netherlands and Finland to woo investors after getting a whiff of the defections, said the BJP’s unease had been evident ever since the strict anti-sacrilege law was enacted. AAP chief spokesperson Baltej Pannu and Lok Sabha MP Gurmeet Singh Meet Hayer pre-empted the BJP’s announcement, breaking the news of the defections well before Raghav and other rebel leaders could. They accused Union Home Minister Amit Shah of backing the Raghav-led conspiracy.“The BJP and the defecting MPs have betrayed Punjab. Punjabis will give them a befitting reply, just as they did to Sukhpal Singh Khaira, Kanwar Sandhu, Jagdev Singh Kamalu, Pirmal Singh, Nazar Singh Mansahia, who rebelled against the party in 2018,” he said.Citing Congress leaders who had joined the BJP, the CM said while central agencies had stopped probing their cases, “politically, all of them were losers”. “‘Eh tan sarpanch de election nahin jitt sakde (they can’t even win a panchayat poll)… they were made MPs because AAP considered them assets to society… people never elected them,” he said.Mann alleged that after failing to find anything against him or his government, the BJP had “resorted to using the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income Tax Department to scare AAP leaders and force them to join the saffron party”. “I dare the ED to raid my residence. Just as they found nothing at the houses of our MP Sanjay Singh and former Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, they will find nothing here too. The BJP is doing this because it fears the good work done by my government. They see us as a threat not just in Punjab, but also in Gujarat. What they did with the TMC in Bengal, JJP in Haryana and with the NCP in Maharashtra, they are trying to do the same with AAP,” he said.With the Assembly elections only a few months away, analysts said the BJP had now shifted its focus from West Bengal to Punjab. They said though the seven defections may demoralise the AAP cadre, it would have to be seen how the BJP would benefit from the seven Rajya Sabha MPs in Punjab as none of them had any electoral base in the state. The analyst said the next task for AAP would be to keep its 94 MLAs and three Lok Sabha MPs together. Over the past four years, AAP has levelled several allegations against the BJP for launching “Operation Lotus” to wean away its MLAs.