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As Raghav Chadha walks into BJP, Union minister Ravneet Bittu's ‘catwalk’ jibes are viral in Punjab. What he says now
Ravneet Singh Bittu, who joined BJP from Congress in 2024, had spoken just last week about how there was “no need” for Chadha to join the party.
After seven of AAP's 10 Rajya Sabha MPs walked out of the party and merged into the BJP on Friday, videos of Union minister and BJP leader Ravneet Singh Bittu's digs at Raghav Chadha are viral on Punjabi social media as the AAP-ruled state heads to polls in about 10 months.
Rajya Sabha member Bittu — among the newer recruits of the BJP as the party tries to make a mark on its own in Punjab — had said last week that there was “no need” for Chadha to enter the BJP as he was "already doing the work he's doing", referring to Chadha's attacks on the Arvind Kejriwal-led party. He took jibes at his "catwalk", among other personal remarks.
By Saturday night, now that Chadha and he are both in the BJP, Bittu claimed he meant "it was not possible for Chadha to switch as he still had two years left in his RS term". After seven of 10 AAP RS MPs crossed over, that legal hurdle was all but gone. As for the “catwalk” comment, Bittu tried to give it a new meaning.
Why Punjab is at nub of AAP rupture
Punjab is in focus because, of the seven AAP MPs who've now switched sides, six are from that state, including Chadha who is ethnically a Punjabi Hindu but a Delhi resident. Besides Chadha there's AAP strategist Sandeep Pathak; plus industrialists Ashok Mittal, Vikramjit Sahney and Rajinder Gupta, and cricketer Harbhajan Singh. Swati Maliwal entered the Rajya Sabha from Delhi.
Chadha, when announcing his switch to the BJP on Friday, said, “The reason is that I didn't want to be apart of their sins." AAP leaders have been accused by the BJP of corruption in recent years.
Bittu's comments, meanwhile, underlined the complexity of the BJP's solo Punjab foray — and Chadha's Punjab plan if any — as the state votes early next year.
“Now, even the people who held the government in their fist and controlled it are speaking," Bittu said in an interview last week about the 2027 elections. He mentioned Chadha in that context, after the latter had already been removed by the AAP as its deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha on April 2. “No matter what anyone says, Raghav Chadha was the all-in-all of the Aam Aadmi Party. Today he stands on the other side," Bittu said, "So, how many internal secrets will he reveal in the coming days?”
He made similar assertions in multiple interactions.
Chadha was co-incharge of AAP's Punjab affairs and was heavily credited with the party's landslide victory in the 2022 elections, in which it won 92 out of 117 seats. There was some outcry, though, even within the AAP when Chadha and Chhattisgarh-native Sandeep Pathak, both party strategists but “outsiders”, were picked for RS seats from Punjab in 2022.
What Bittu said, the clarified
Bittu was sent to the Rajya Sabha by the BJP from Rajasthan after he lost the Lok Sabha election in Ludhiana in 2024, soon after switching loyalties from the Congress after decades of family ties.
He was asked pointedly if Chadha could join the BJP after his public fallout with the AAP. “No, the need for him to join the BJP would only arise if he wasn't already doing the work he's doing. He's doing it himself, so there's no need to make him join. They are dancing themselves,” Bittu said in the April 12 interview to a web channel.
He blamed Chadha for his being jailed (briefly over a protest in 2024), and said CM Bhagwant Mann was pressured by Chadha and Kejriwal. “I have endured a lot because of Chadha… Being a man, he does catwalk!” Bittu remarked.
Chadha walked the ramp at the Lakme Fashion Week in 2022 for his uncle, who is a fashion designer; and posted images on Instagram too.
Bittu took another jibe in a different interaction: “This Punjab is a land of lions, with men who have proud, long beards. This chikna (cleanshaven) fellow — if you slap him once, the marks won't fade for two months.”
Chadha did not react, nor did the BJP clarify.
Bittu faced the press on Saturday, and said: “I was very happy yesterday (after AAP MPs came to BJP). I was in West Bengal, campaigning for the elections. I came to Delhi to celebrate.”
He clarified, speaking in Punjabi: “The catwalk I was talking about, that catwalk has been semi-finalised so far. The final catwalk will be done by Bhagwant Mann. You will get a chance to see that too.”
He added, “I told you that Raghav Chadha cannot come to BJP at all. Because the party he is in, he had a two-year term left as RS MP.”
He further asserted that the BJP did not ask him or others to join. “They, by themselves, made the decision.”
Bittu is among the more prominent faces of the BJP in Punjab at present, and has said that while he would want to contest the 2027 Vidhan Sabha elections “most likely from Ludhiana”, but the decision on the CM face “rests with the party's disciplined process”.
Punjab BJP chief Sunil Jakhar, however, welcomed the AAP MPs who, he said, “at the right time, chose to leave the sinking ship of AAP and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party”, on Friday.
Jakhar, himself a former Congress leader, further said, “Due to AAP’s poor governance, corruption, and collapse of law and order, the people of Punjab have lost faith in the party. After it abandoned public interest, even well-meaning individuals within AAP are being compelled to leave."
Chadha on Punjab
Chadha, meanwhile, has already professed his love and commitment for Punjab. Accused of only raising “soft issues” in the Rajya Sabha, he shared compilations of his parliamentary speeches on Punjab-centric issues such as farm-produce prices, groundwater depletion, honour for freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, and the state's fiscal dues from the Centre.
“Punjab is not a talking point for me. It is my commitment. It is my soul,” he said in a post on X.
It's not clear if he would contest the assembly polls or play a role as the “outsider” jab has returned via comments by the Congress and SAD too.
Punjab Congress chief Amarinde Singh Warring said, "The AAP has no ideology. This was natural. These MPs have no relevance in Punjab. AAP should remain aware — their 50 MLAs might join the BJP next!”
AAP's reaction, and BJP's Punjab ambition
CM Bhagwant Mann has been dismissive: “These six-seven MPs were not the party. They were not mass leaders. None of them is capable of becoming even a village sarpanch."
He said they had originally chosen for being eminent in their fields. “But there is no machine to read minds,” he said at a press meet on Friday. He called these MPs “gaddar” or traitors of Punjab, and branded the BJP a party of "kaddhe, waddhe te chhadde" (the expelled, divided, and left-behind) — the Punjabi wordplay jibing Chadha pointedly.
Mann mentioned Bittu too: “Does one hear about these leaders who joined the BJP (from other parties… Even Ravneet Singh Bittu will be sidelined the day the BJP comes to know he holds no sway in the state.”
At Chadha and group's joining ceremony at the BJP HQ in Delhi, among those present was Tarun Chugh, a BJP national general secretary with roots in Punjab's Amritsar.
The BJP, which has just two MLAs in a House of 117, now has six MPs, up from zero.
It has never won power in Punjab on its own, and in its best years it was a junior partner to the SAD. Yet, Union home minister Amit Shah declared at a Moga rally in March that the party will contest 2027 entirely on its own, formally ending any prospect of reviving the Akali-BJP alliance that broke during the farmers' protest of 2020. “You [voters] have given a chance to all political parties. Now give us one chance," Shah said.
The BJP secured around 19% of Punjab's vote in the 2024 LS polls contesting alone, but got no seats. It has been building its Punjab roster through inductions from across the political spectrum, Bittu included. Most recently in April, HS Phoolka — the human rights lawyer who became an AAP MLA in 2017 and was Leader of Opposition before walking away statedly to focus on his work for the 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims — formally joined the BJP.
But the 2027 contest is shaping up as a multi-cornered fight involving the AAP, the main opposition Congress, the regional and Sikh force Shiromani Akali Dal; and the BJP.
