India, April 30 -- With his meeting now scheduled for May 5, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday signalled a political escalation in the fallout of the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP's) Rajya Sabha defections, announcing that he would head to Rashtrapati Bhavan along with all party assembly members to meet Droupadi Murmu. While the President's office has granted him an appointment to meet her alone, Mann, in a X post on Thursday, said the legislators would accompany him and wait outside as he places "Punjab's case" before her -- a move that underscores both the optics and urgency the party is attempting to convey.

At the core of the proposed meeting, however, lies a demand that sits uneasily within India's constitutional framework: t...