By Ananya Sharma 
Chandigarh, May 1: The Aam Aadmi Party government had called a special session of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha on Friday to mark International Workers’ Day, a gesture meant to signal solidarity with the working class, to project an image of a government that still remembered why it came to power. What followed instead was roughly two hours of legislators screaming across the chamber, Opposition members demanding breathalyser tests, a walkout, a counter-walkout, and enough viral video footage to keep political commentators busy for the next several days.
At the centre of it all: Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, and the allegation that he arrived at the Assembly drunk.
He denied it. The AAP government denied it. The Speaker did not order any test. And yet, by the time Friday afternoon rolled around, the headlines were not about workers or their rights or AAP’s confidence motion. They were about this.
How It Actually Unfolded to Bhagwant Mann
The session started ordinarily enough. The AAP government had issued a whip to all 94 of its MLAs to be present, which was itself notable given the political turbulence the party has been navigating since seven of its Rajya Sabha MPs, six of them from Punjab, crossed over to the BJP barely a week ago. The confidence motion Mann intended to move was clearly designed to send a message: the party is still standing, still unified, still in control.
That message got complicated quickly.
At some point during the proceedings, a Congress MLA alleged from the floor that the Chief Minister had arrived in an intoxicated state. The claim landed like a match on dry grass. Leader of Opposition Pratap Singh Bajwa picked it up immediately and escalated it with surgical efficiency, demanding that the Assembly doors be locked and every single legislator, not just Mann, be subjected to an alcohol meter test on the spot. His logic was simple and, in its own way, hard to immediately argue with: if the allegation is against the head of state, then everyone gets tested. No one gets to walk away clean on someone else’s word.
The treasury benches erupted. Shouting broke out. The AAP side rallied around Mann. The opposition kept at it.
Things got messier when Mann, who had reportedly objected during the debate to Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira sitting on his phone rather than paying attention, tried to step out for a break. Khaira, apparently not finished, called out the CM’s behaviour openly. Mann reportedly turned around mid-exit and came back to engage. According to The Tribune’s account of events, it was right at this point that Bajwa formally moved his demand for the alcohol test.
What followed was chaos. Congress MLAs entered the well of the House in protest. Then they walked out entirely. Mann eventually left too. The session, meant to honour the labour class, had by then become something else altogether.
Who Said What
Outside the chamber, things were no quieter. Sukhpal Khaira held a press conference where he went further, alleging that this was not an isolated incident and that Mann had appeared similarly at other public functions in the past.
Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal weighed in on social media, calling the alleged conduct a grave insult to the people of Punjab. The Akali Dal also demanded a dope test, to be conducted publicly.
Then there was BJP MP Swati Maliwal, who has had her own very public falling-out with AAP and now sits on the other side of that divide. She shared video of Mann addressing the House and demanded an alcohol test, alleging in a strongly worded post that this was part of a pattern, that Mann had reportedly attended religious sites, government meetings, even international travel, while intoxicated. She also brought up an old promise Mann had made to give up drinking.
The AAP government’s response was, to put it plainly, to change the subject. The official line was that the session was about Labour Day and members should maintain decorum. Mann himself, after winning the confidence motion, spoke to ANI and said that all speculation about AAP MLAs switching sides had now been put to rest. He did not directly address the drunk allegation in those remarks.
This Allegation Has a History
It is worth noting that accusations of this kind against Mann are not new. Back in 2022, Opposition leaders made similar claims about an incident on a flight. AAP dismissed those as politically motivated then, and the story eventually faded. Whether Friday’s episode follows the same arc remains to be seen, but the political climate today is significantly more hostile than it was three years ago.
Punjab is approaching an election cycle. The Rajya Sabha defections have rattled AAP’s national image. And every piece of footage that goes viral, every press conference allegation, every demand for a breathalyser test, adds a layer to a narrative the party is struggling to contain.
The Confidence Motion Nobody Talked About
Here is the irony of Friday: Mann did win the confidence motion. The AAP’s 94-member majority held. Not a single MLA crossed over. By any objective measure of legislative arithmetic, the government emerged from the day intact. In a quieter political moment, that would have been the story. The Chief Minister consolidates his position, defection fears are answered, AAP signals strength ahead of elections.
Instead, the story is breathalyser tests and viral videos. That is not a small thing to overcome.
What This Says About Where Punjab Politics Is
There is a version of this story where the drunk allegation is completely false, politically engineered to embarrass a Chief Minister on a day when cameras were already rolling. That version is entirely possible. The Opposition in Punjab, as anywhere else, is not above weaponising an unverified claim when the timing is good.
But there is another version worth sitting with. The session collapsed. The Assembly, the so-called temple of democracy as multiple politicians called it Friday, became a shouting match over whether the Chief Minister needed a breathalyser. No formal test was ordered. No inquiry was announced. The Speaker made no definitive intervention, at least not publicly. And so the allegation hangs, unresolved, unanswered, available to anyone who wants to pick it up and use it.
For the people of Punjab, the ones the Labour Day session was actually supposed to be for, Friday delivered something less than what was promised. A debate about their rights, their wages, their conditions of work, got drowned out entirely. What they got instead was politics as usual, loud, unruly, and ultimately more about the politicians than the people watching.
For now, the AAP government has its confidence motion. It also has a problem that a confidence motion cannot fix.
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- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
- Ananya Sharma
Kavita Iyer 
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