New Delhi:

AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal has a big responsibility for the party’s pan India expansion and he will not become a Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, party leaders said on Wednesday.

The buzz over Mr Kejriwal going to the Rajya Sabha intensified with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) declaring the sitting MP of the upper house from Punjab, Sanjeev Arora, as its candidate for the bypoll in Ludhiana West Assembly seat.

Mr Kejriwal, the former three-term chief minister of Delhi, was defeated in the recent assembly polls from the New Delhi seat by BJP’s Parvesh Verma.

Mr Kejriwal is working to expand the AAP throughout the country, said senior party leader Somnath Bharti.

“Kejriwal will not go to the Rajya Sabha because he has the big responsibility of the party’s expansion in the country and he is working on it,” Bharti told PTI.

Echoing similar sentiments, AAP chief spokesperson Priyanka Kakkar said Sanjeev Arora is the best candidate for Ludhiana West seat and that is why he has been fielded from there.

She said the sources claiming Mr Kejriwal will reach the Rajya Sabha from Punjab are completely wrong.

“As far as Arvind Kejriwal is concerned, earlier sources of media said he will become the Punjab Chief Minister and now they are saying he will go to the Rajya Sabha from Punjab. Both these media sources are absolutely wrong,” Kakkar told PTI.

Mr Kejriwal is the AAP’s national convener and he is not confined to one state, she said.

Meanwhile, Delhi Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said Mr Kejriwal’s “dream” of reaching the Rajya Sabha will not be realised.

“Punjabis will never let dream of Kejriwal to get Rajya Sabha membership from Punjab fulfilled,” the BJP leader said in a statement.

Mr Sirsa urged the people of Ludhiana West to ensure Sanjiv Arora’s defeat in the by-election and “crush the dream of Kejriwal”.

Mr Kejriwal is a “power hungry” person who cannot live without it, he charged and claimed that earlier he wanted to become the chief minister of Punjab by removing Bhagwant Mann and now he was trying to reach the Rajya Sabha from the state.

Mr Sirsa said the AAP’s defeat in the Ludhiana West by-poll will also lay the foundation of the party’s ouster in the 2027 assembly elections and it will meet the same fate, which it has met in Delhi. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)