New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party Friday appointed former minister Saurabh Bharadwaj as the chief of its Delhi unit, replacing Gopal Rai, and named Manish Sisodia the in-charge of Punjab, bringing about an organisational shake-up over a month after losing power in the national capital to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The decision to entrust 45-year-old Bharadwaj—viewed as a nimble-footed leader in AAP circles—with its organisational affairs in Delhi is an indication that the party is gearing up to stage a turnaround in the national capital, where it was born out of an anti-corruption movement a little over a decade ago.
At the same time, the appointment of Sisodia, Kejriwal’s closest associate and AAP’s founding member, as the Punjab in-charge aligns with the former Delhi chief minister’s bid to retain power in the only state ruled by the party, where assembly polls are due in two years.
It comes days after Kejriwal’s message to the Punjab leadership that the state will be his primary focus in the coming days.
Following his appointment, Bharadwaj, who, as the health minister, was among the most visible faces of the party after the arrests of Kejriwal, Sisodia and AAP Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh in the excise policy case, told reporters that he feels that it is easier to strengthen the organisation following a defeat.
“In (Delhi) assembly elections, AAP’s vote share was 43.5 percent, while BJP’s vote share was 45.5 percent, only two percentage points more than us. This shows that nearly half of Delhi had voted for us, despite all the use of police and the Election Commission. We will work for those who voted for us as well as those who voted for the BJP with a lot of hope. I believe it is easier to strengthen the party after losing,” he said.
The party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) chaired by AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal made the appointments. Rai, who had been serving as the Delhi chief of the party since April 2017, will now be AAP’s Gujarat in-charge.
AAP sources attributed the move to appoint Bharadwaj—an engineer and lawyer by qualification, who worked as a professional in the United States before joining the India Against Corruption movement in 2011—to his ability to set political narratives.
He is the brainchild behind the processions that the AAP takes out on the occasions of Hanuman Jayanti to counter the BJP’s Hindutva push. However, he was stung by a defeat in the 2025 assembly elections to BJP’s Shikha Rai in the Greater Kailash assembly constituency, which he has represented thrice since 2013.
For the first few weeks after the declaration of results on 8 February, Bharadwaj struggled to come to terms with the defeat and retreated from public interactions. Later, he launched a YouTube channel, self-deprecatingly named “Berozgar Neta (Unemployed Politician)”, where he offered political commentary on issues related to Delhi.
Bharadwaj served as a minister even in the first term of the Kejriwal government that lasted 49 days between December 2013 and February 2014.
Other than Bharadwaj, Sisodia and Rai, the other new appointments include those of Satyendar Jain as the co-incharge of Punjab, Pankaj Gupta as the in-charge of Goa, where the party has two MLAs. Sandeep Pathak, who is the AAP’s national general secretary (organisation), will also handle Chhattisgarh as the in-charge.
Also, Mehraj Malik, the party’s lone MLA in Jammu and Kashmir, has been given the charge of the Union Territory.
The AAP lost power in Delhi this year after registering overwhelming victories in the 2015 and 2020 assembly elections. The party came to power in Punjab, displacing the Congress in 2022, and made inroads in Gujarat that same year, winning five assembly seats and securing a vote share of 12.92 percent.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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