New Delhi: Seven rebel Rajya Sabha MPs of the Aam Aadmi Party were officially inducted into the Bharatiya Janata Party as the Rajya Sabha Secretariat updated the party’s position in the Upper House.Last month, after being removed from the post of deputy leader in Rajya Sabha, Raghav Chadha had left AAP along with six MPs and decided to merge with BJP.“We have decided that we, two-thirds of the AAP members in the Rajya Sabha, will exercise the provisions of the Constitution of India and merge with the BJP,” Raghav Chadha said at a press conference.The BJP had 106 members, and the NDA had 141 (including seven nominated members). These total numbers have now increased to 113 and 148 respectively. With more than 30 seats vacant by the end of the year, the BJP is expected to gain at least five more seats, moving closer to the two-thirds majority mark of 163.Why anti defection law Will not apply to AAP MPsDespite the Tenth Schedule, the anti-defection law will not apply to AAP MPs, as it allows two-thirds of the legislative party members to secede and merge with another party.The law says: “A member of a House shall not be disqualified under the Tenth Schedule if his original political party merges with any other political party and he claims that he and other members of his original political party have become members of such other political party or, as the case may be, members of the new political party formed by such merger.”If the numbers were less, those seeking merger would have had to give up their membership of the Upper House.Therefore, if Chadha had stepped down alone, he would have had to give up his Rajya Sabha membership. But this is not so because along with the outgoing AAP leader, Swati Maliwal, Harbhajan Singh, Sandeep Pathak, Ashok Mittal, Rajinder Gupta and Vikram Sahni are also included.