According to the BJP, Bungalow No. 50 of the Punjab government, in Chandigarh’s Sector 2, is Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s new ‘Sheesh Mahal’. With that, another lore has been added to a residence spread over two acres, located a stone’s throw away from the Punjab Chief Minister’s residence, that has long been more than just an address in the state, and often at the heart of its political ups and downs.
The Opposition says that Kejriwal, who has been coming to Punjab frequently since he lost his Delhi chief ministership to the BJP, has converted the bungalow into a “palatial” base for his visits to Chandigarh. The AAP denies the claims.
Over the years, Bungalow No. 50 has been fashioned by different governments for different purposes: to house a former Haryana CM to senior police chiefs during the militancy years, as well as to temporarily accommodate key political negotiators and prominent state leaders. Under the AAP government led by Bhagwant Singh Mann, it is designated “the CM’s camp office-cum-guest house”.
One reason is Bungalow No. 50’s location, with the area in Chandigarh the seat of power, including the residences of the Punjab and Haryana CMs, the CM’s Officr, the Punjab Civil Secretariat, and the Punjab and Haryana High Courts.
Kejriwal himself has stayed in Bungalow No. 5 for all of three days so far, in October. During his September visit, also for a couple of days, Kejriwal stayed at Vikas Bhawan, a government guest house located in an upmarket area of Mohali.
Before Kejriwal, Bungalow No. 50 was occupied by AAP Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha. The party’s former Punjab in-charge, Chadha used the residence as his base and, according to sources, set up an elaborate office on the premises. Chadha’s appointment as “adviser” to the Punjab government, incidentally, had faced a row over his alleged “absence” from the state.
After Chadha vacated it in September, the bungalow saw a round of whitewashing and cleaning, and Kejriwal stayed there during his post-Diwali visit, on October 22. A long meeting there with CM Mann was a highlight of that trip.
Sources said one reason behind looking for an accommodation for Kejriwal in Chandigarh was that his stay at Vikas Bhawan, a guesthouse of the Rural Development Department, was inconveniencing other guests, many of whom used to stay there while in town for hospital visits. In fact, after it was identified for Kejriwal’s stay in June 2025, the guesthouse was virtually closed for public use.
To BJP leaders’ questions over the “allotment” of the large, well-maintained house to a “non-resident” leader, Mann has said that Bungalow No. 50 was meant to be his camp office, and that Kejriwal was using the space purely as a guest. Mann also raised questions about its use under Amarinder Singh as Congress CM.
While Amarinder stayed at Bungalow No. 44 during his tenure, the CM’s pool of residences at the time included No.s 8 and 43, which housed his grandson Nirvan Singh (Amarinder’s social media incharge), and his son Raninder Singh, respectively.
But Bungalow No. 50 did make news at the time – over its allegedly lavish renovation. Its resident, Advocate General Atul Nanda, was accused of spending Rs 1 crore – some of it from his own pocket – on refurbishments in 2017, including marble imported from Egypt, revamp of washrooms, and layering of the courtyard with sandstone tiles.
Then AAP Leader of the Opposition Sukhpal Khaira obtained the expenditure details through RTI, and flagged the “splurge” during a period of financial stress for the state. Khaira, who is now in the Congress, told The Indian Express: “I took information under the RTI then. Now, they (the AAP government) are just refusing to give any information… They have been splurging on everything – houses, security, vehicles, even a chopper.”
In 2021, ahead of the Assembly elections in Punjab, Nanda vacated the house. For around a year, Deputy CM and Congress leader Sukhjinder Randhawa occupied it, before the Congress was swept out of power by the AAP.
According to official resources, some of the renovation carried out by Nanda was overdue. Under the Akali Dal government that preceded the Congress, the resident of Bungalow No. 50 was Adesh Partap Singh Kairon, a political heavyweight and a relative of the Badals. Kairon used the house to accommodate visitors from his constituency, and it was in a bad shape.
“It was more like a public inn. The place was dilapidated, the washrooms stank, and people slept in mattresses laid on the floor,” said a source. An Akali leader, requesting anonymity, said this was a while back, and they did not know much about the residence. “Kairon used it as a kind of guesthouse. He never stayed in the house.”
Earlier, between 1999 and 2002, when the bungalow was allotted to then CM Parkash Singh Badal, he gave it to his friend and former Haryana CM O P Chautala to live in for two years.
During the Punjab militancy era in the ’80s, Bungalow No. 50 served as the residence and office of two of the state’s most prominent police chiefs: K P S Gill and Julio Ribeiro.
Under the AAP government, the notification of Bungalow No. 50 as the CM’s camp office cleared the way for Chadha to function from there.
As for Kejriwal, he was back in Punjab this week, to campaign for the Tarn Taran Assembly seat bypoll. But, in the wake of the ‘Sheesh Mahal 2.0’ row, the AAP supremo stayed clear of Bungalow No. 50 as well as Chandigarh.