The ruling Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab won a confidence motion in the 117-member Assembly on Friday.

The motion was moved by Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann during a special one-day session, days after seven of the AAP’s ten MPs in the Rajya Sabha split from the party and announced that they were joining the Bharatiya Janata Party’s legislature unit.

The AAP has a majority in the Punjab Assembly with 94 MLAs. The Congress has 16 MLAs and the Shiromani Akali Dal has three. Two of the legislators belong to the BJP, one to the Bahujan Samaj Party and one is an Independent.

Of AAP’s 94 MLAs, 88 were present in the Assembly when voting on the confidence motion took place, reported The Times of India. While two MLAs are abroad, two are in jail and two were hospitalised.

The Congress had staged a walkout from the House and the BJP boycotted the session, according to The Hindu.

Mann said the motion was moved to counter rumours that members of the AAP were in contact with the Opposition parties.

AAP MP’s merger with BJP

On April 24, AAP’s former deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha Raghav Chadha said that seven of the party’s 10 MPs in the Upper House were merging with the BJP.

He claimed that two-thirds of AAP’s members in the Rajya Sabha supported the move, which he said was in line with constitutional provisions allowing such a merger.

Chadha made the announcement at a press conference with AAP MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal. However, he claimed that other AAP MPs Harbhajan Singh, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Swati Maliwal were supporting the decision to merge with the BJP. Except Maliwal, all other MPs had been elected from Punjab, where the AAP is in power.

On April 26, AAP leader Sanjay Singh said that he has submitted a petition to Rajya Sabha Chairperson CP Radhakrishnan seeking the disqualification of the seven AAP MPs. Singh said that the decision by the seven MPs amounted to defection and violated the anti-defection law.

Radhakrishnan on Monday accepted the merger of the seven MPs with the BJP.

With this, the Hindutva party now has 113 MPs in the 245-member House. AAP has three MPs each in the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha.

A party or a coalition needs the support of 123 members to command a majority in the Upper House.

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance now has 137 members in the Rajya Sabha.

Also read: Can the move by the 7 AAP MPs to merge with the BJP withstand legal scrutiny?