4 Goa AAP leaders including ex-president, acting president quit party

PANAJI: Four leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) Goa unit, including the party’s Goa unit president Amit Palekar and its acting chief Srikrishna Parab, resigned from the party on Monday.

Palekar, who was the party’s presumptive chief minister in the 2022 assembly elections, was removed as the state president last month following AAP’s performance in the Zilla Panchayat elections. AAP, which contested 42 seats, won only one. The BJP-MGP alliance won 32 of the 50 ZP seats, while the Congress won 10.

Srikrishna Parab, the party’s state organisation secretary who was told to hold the additional charge of AAP state unit president, has also resigned

On Monday, Palekar, Srikrishna Parab, Goa AAP’s youth wing president Rohan Naik, and the youth wing’s vice president Chetan Kamat, announced their exit from the party.

In a letter released on X, Palekar said he had joined AAP because he believed in its promise of an alternative political culture anchored in transparency, internal democracy, and respect for grassroots voices. “Over time, however, it became increasingly difficult to reconcile these ideals with the way decisions are presently taken and communicated,” Palekar said.

“When dialogue and consultation are limited, and decisions flow only from the top, it does not weaken individuals but strains institutions. For a movement that set out to redefine democratic functioning, this divergence has been deeply disheartening,” he added in the letter.

At a Press conference, Palekar said that the manner in which he was relieved from the post of president was unacceptable, that he was singled out for the party’s poor showing in the elections when the responsibility lay “with the national leadership as well”. He also said there were other things, too, that contributed to their decision.

Palekar has had differences with the party’s national leadership, over going it alone in the polls and had advocated for the AAP to be part of a united opposition alliance. “I also stand firmly with my belief of united opposition for the interest of Goa and Goans,” he said.

Palekar had called for an alliance to defeat the BJP in Goa after the party’s spectacular defeat in the Delhi assembly elections in February last year.

“It is very easy to say we don’t want an alliance, but when Congress needed our support for the Lok Sabha elections, we took a step back, and asked our candidates, who we had already declared, to stand down and we probably worked harder than the Congress,” AAP Palekar said in February 2025 after the Delhi election results were declared.

Palekar said he would announce his next steps in due course.