The defection of Raghav Chadha , along with six other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Rajya Sabha MPs including Swati Maliwal, to the BJP marks perhaps the most consequential exit of the AAP’s founding leaders in recent years. Both Chadha and Maliwal trace their political roots to the party’s formative phase and were long seen as part of party chief Arvind Kejriwal’s inner circle. Their departure, however, is less an aberration than the latest chapter in a long arc that has seen the AAP’s several key figures either walk out or be pushed out of it over the past decade. In many ways, this churn has fundamentally reshaped AAP—from a movement-driven collective that emerged out of the India Against Corruption agitation in 2011-12 into a centralised political organisation anchored around Kejriwal’s leadership.…