Rajya Sabha Secretariat denies Raghav Chadha's request to speak in House, citing no time allocation by AAP: sources

This comes after the Aam Aadmi Party sent an official letter to the Rajya Sabha Secretariat informing that Ashok Kumar Mittal will be the new Deputy Leader of AAP in the Upper House, the party stated.

Mittal has replaced Raghav Chadha as the Deputy Leader of AAP in the House.

A Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, Mittal was elected to the House in April 2022 and, since then, has been a part of several parliamentary committees, including the Committee on Defence, the Committee on Finance and in February 2026, he was made a member of the India- USA Parliamentary Friendship Group.

He was also a part of an all-party delegation, led by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) MP Kanimozhi, which visited Russia, Latvia, Slovenia, Greece, and Spain after the Pahalgam terror attack last year.

Raghav Chadha has also been an MP since April 2022. He has made headlines on several occasions for raising public issues in Parliament.

Last month, Raghav Chadha raised concerns over the practice of "sarpanch pati" or "panchayat pati," where women elected to reserved Panchayat seats often serve as figureheads while real power is exercised by their male relatives. He urged the government to ensure that women representatives in local bodies can exercise genuine authority as intended under the 73rd Constitutional Amendment.

He had also raised the issue of menstrual hygiene in Parliament, stating that it is a matter of health, education and equality, which affects over 35 crore women and girls in India. Chadha said if a girl misses school because there are no sanitary pads, water, and privacy, it is not her personal problem but a collective failure. He added that society has turned a biological fact into a social taboo.

Amid the gig workers' agitation earlier this year, he had spent a day as a delivery partner to understand firsthand the pressure and challenges associated with the job. (ANI)