Newsmaker | Who is Sushil Kumar Rinku? Months after protest against BJP ‘in chains’, AAP MP joins BJP

As a record number of Opposition MPs were suspended from Parliament in December, Sushil Kumar Rinku was among them.

Months earlier, during the Monsoon Session in August, Rinku, who is the Jalandhar MP and the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) lone parliamentarian in the outgoing House, was suspended over “unruly behaviour” when the House was considering the Delhi Services Bill. He had come to the Well of the House, torn some papers, and threw them towards Speaker Om Birla. After his suspension, he protested in chains against his suspension before Parliament. Rinku is now in the BJP.

On April 5, 2023, the 48-year-old moved from the Congress to the AAP ahead of the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll. It came within hours of the grand old party expelling him over alleged anti-party activities. The bypoll had been necessitated by the death of Congress MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary in January of that year during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. On May 13, Rinku defeated the Congress’s Karamjit Kaur, the wife of the deceased MP, by 58,691 votes.

Rinku joined the BJP on Wednesday, even though the AAP had already declared him its nominee, along with Jalandhar West MLA Sheetal Angural. In the 2022 Assembly polls, Anugral defeated Rinku who contested on a Congress ticket.

Rinku is from a family that has been active in the Congress for more than four decades. His father and uncle were both involved with the party’s local unit. His father, the late Ram Lal, was elected Jalandhar councillor in 1997 and 2002, and his wife Sunita too was elected councillor in 2007.

Rinku got involved in politics during his student days. By 1990, he was an active member of the Congress’s student wing NSUI. A graduate of DAV College Jalandhar, he was elected president of its