With just a week to go for the municipal corporation elections in Punjab, all eyes are on Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha’s enrolment as a voter in Mohali.
Chadha’s name appears in the voter list of Ward Number 44 of the Mohali Municipal Corporation, raising questions over whether he will return to the state to cast his vote on May 26.
According to the electoral rolls of Mohali Municipal Corporation, Chadha is registered at Serial Number 253, Booth Number 160 in Ward 44, with his address listed as Regency Heights in Mohali. He had earlier cast his vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections at the Lakhnaur polling station in Mohali under the Anandpur Sahib constituency.
Chadha, along with six other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs, had engineered a major political defection by merging with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since joining the BJP, he has expressed apprehensions about possible targeting by the AAP government in Punjab.
After quitting the AAP, Chadha has not visited Punjab, even though he continues to describe himself as a “son of Punjab”.
Local AAP circles are closely watching his next move. Phool Raj Singh, the AAP candidate from Ward Number 44, said Chadha should come to Mohali and exercise his voting right.
“He projects himself as a Punjabi, so he must use his vote in the civic polls,” Singh said.
Meanwhile, Chadha’s voter registration in Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar constituency (Serial Number 313, Part Number 52) has been deleted. The move to enrol himself in Mohali appears to have been made after he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab in April 2022, when his “outsider” status had sparked a political row in the state.
Efforts to contact Chadha on his mobile phone did not yield any result.
Chadha casting his vote in Mohali is being seen as a strategic step to strengthen his connection with Punjab’s electorate at a time when the civic body elections are being viewed as a precursor to the larger Assembly battle.
