Delhi Chief Minister Atishi on Sunday forwarded her resignation to Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena days after the party’s rout in the recent assembly elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stormed back to power in the national capital, securing 48 out of 70 seats.
Atishi, who had assumed the charge in September after Arvind Kejriwal resigned over the row related to the excise policy, submitted her resignation at Raj Niwas. Amid unprecedented defeats of top brass in the party, including Kejriwal, former Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and minister Saurabh Bharadwaj, Atishi retains her Kalkaji seat, defeating BJP’s Ramesh Biduri.
In the elections that took place on February 5th, the ruling party of the past ten years, Aam Aadmi Party, AAP, managed to get an abysmal 22 seats against their previous tally of 62, while BJP had just eight members in the past assembly.
“I have won my seat but this isn’t the time to celebrate; time to fight. Our fight against BJP’s autocracy will continue,” Atishi said after the election result. Her victory may strengthen her position in AAP, to which she has been gradually finding a ramp. Meanwhile, BJP has started high-level deliberations to decide the next Chief Minister of Delhi. The party is likely to stake claim for power next week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns from a foreign visit.
Parvesh Verma, who defeated AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in New Delhi constituency, emerges as the front-runner for the Chief Minister’s post. Others in the fray include senior BJP leader Vijender Gupta, former Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly; Satish Upadhyay, a prominent Brahmin leader and former state BJP president; Ashish Sood, the Delhi BJP general secretary who has good proximity with central leaders; and Jitendra Mahajan, a prominent RSS representative from the Vaishya community.
Party chiefs, however, said the central leadership may adopt an amended nomenclature of the post. A five-member BJP delegation — Verma, Kailash Gahlot, Arvinder Singh Lovely, Rajkumar Chouhan and Neeraj Basoya — left for Raj Bhavan and called on Lt Governor Saxena when discussion on the formation of the government began.
