Saurabh Bharadwaj

New Delhi: AAP's Delhi unit chief Saurabh Bharadwaj hit back at Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Monday over his "toxic workplace" analogy, saying even when an employee decides to leave a company, he serves a notice period instead of conspiring to damage the organisation's image.

Bharadwaj's remarks came after Chadha, who along with six other Rajya Sabha MPs of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), announced his decision to merge with the ruling BJP, defended his exit by comparing the Arivind Kejriwal-led party to a toxic workplace.

Chadha had said if the atmosphere at the workplace becomes toxic, employees are stopped from working, their hard work is suppressed and they are silenced, then the right decision is to leave that place. Responding to this, Bharadwaj said while people may leave companies, political parties are based on ideology and not merely workplace convenience. "There is nothing to do with ideology in changing a company. But if someone agrees with the ideology of a political party, only then does he join it," he said in a video posted on X. Bharadwaj added that even in a company, an employeewho decides to leave follows professional ethics. "If an employee leaves a company, he serves a three-month notice period so that whatever he has learnt from that company can be properly transitioned. They do not conspire to ruin the company's image," he said. Bharadwaj alleged that instead of leaving the party respectfully, Chadha began planning to join the BJP and started acting in a way that harmed the AAP. "When the ED's pressure increased, you planned to join the BJP and started conspiring with it," he alleged. The AAP leader also claimed that many issues raised by Chadha in Parliament, including affordable food at airports, mobile-recharge concerns, paternity leave and gig workers' rights, were already aligned with the BJP's political agenda.

Chadha said he left a successful career as a practising chartered accountant to enter politics and became a founding member of AAP, giving 15 years of his "prime youth" to build the party. "I didn't come into politics to make my career," he said, adding that he had worked for the party with his "blood, sweat and tears."