India, April 25 -- The resignation of seven out of 10 Rajya Sabha members has plunged the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) into political turmoil just a year after it lost control of Delhi, ratcheted up the stakes for the upcoming assembly polls in Punjab, and raised existential questions about the functioning of the party and its chief, Arvind Kejriwal.

Led by Raghav Chadha, a founding member of the AAP and once a close associate of Kejriwal, the group of seven lawmakers includes six from Punjab - Chadha himself, Ashok Mittal, Sandeep Pathak, Rajinder Gupta, Vikram Sahney and Harbhajan Singh - and one from Delhi, disgruntled MP Swati Maliwal.

Born out of the churn of the 2011 anti-corruption movement, the AAP first tasted power as an insurgent fo...