Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Friday dubbed AAP’s Rajya Sabha members, who quit the party and announced joining the BJP, as “gaddars” (traitors).

Addressing a press conference here, Mann alleged that the BJP was trying to break the AAP and had “betrayed the people of Punjab.”

When they did not find anything against Bhagwant Mann, they tried to break AAP, said Mann, who returned on Friday after nearly a week-long visit to the Netherlands and Finland to attract investments for his state.

They are perturbed why Mann is becoming the leader of people, Mann said, hitting out at the BJP.

People of Punjab are with AAP; they firmly stand with the party, he said.

He also said that the party is bigger than an individual, and 6-7 people who have left do not comprise Punjab.

Chadha and Pathak on Friday announced that they are joining the BJP along with five other MPs of the party.

Earlier, addressing a joint press conference in Delhi, AAP Rajya Sabha MPs Raghav Chadha and Sandeep Pathak said they were joining the BJP.

Chadha claimed that nearly two-thirds of AAP’s Rajya Sabha MPs had quit the party and would join the BJP as a separate faction.

Swati Maliwal and Harbhajan Singh were among the seven who quit, he revealed.

Addressing the media, Mann said, “I have been saying this earlier too that the BJP does not get along with Punjab and Punjabis”.

Anything with which people of Punjab are happy about, it tries to spoil it, he charged.

“When the AAP government was formed in Punjab, it withheld the state’s rural development funds,” he alleged.

He alleged that the “BJP started keeping a grudge against Punjab after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had to take a U-turn over the (now-repealed three) farm laws”.

Citing other examples like the Bhakra Beas Management Board, he said it shows that the BJP cannot win in Punjab, but it indulges in ‘tikrambaazi’ (trick games). Today, the BJP betrayed the people of Punjab by calling some of our RS members to its side, he said.

Mann claimed that through the surveys, the BJP must have come to know the ground reality and thought of creating a flutter by engineering defections. But Punjabis do not tolerate betrayal, he said.

“They are rattled by the work that the AAP government has done. We did those works which they cannot do in history, including giving 300 units free power per month, eight hours uninterrupted power to the farm sector… giving more than 65,000 government jobs and passing the historic bill against sacrilege,” he said.