Will Sunita Kejriwal be the next Chief Minister of Delhi until the next elections? The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now raising this question loudly and is suspicious as to why Kejriwal has asked for two days before resigning. After Kejriwal’s dramatic announcement, BJP’s Sudhanshu Trivedi asked, “Kejriwal has asked for 48 hours to find a replacement or try to make some adjustments.”
BJP’s Shehzad Poonawala also asked the same question whether Kejriwal would choose his wife as the next CM on the concept of “all power and no responsibility” for himself, and whether he was therefore resigning from the CM post out of necessity.
There has been speculation over Sunita Kejriwal’s role over the past few months. As Kejriwal was sent to jail, his wife has been holding rallies and leading the party’s campaign in Haryana. Kejriwal had decided to continue as CM while he was in jail.
Now, he has said that Manish Sisodia and he will not sit on their chairs (CM and deputy CM) until people re-elect them, ruling out the possibility of Sisodia replacing him.
There are only five ministers in the Delhi Cabinet, of which Gopal Rai is the most senior, followed by Imran Hussain, Kailash Gehlot, Saurabh Bhardwaj and Atishi. The most important departments are with Kailash Gehlot, which include Home, Law, Finance and Planning.
BJP called it a drama for sympathy
Meanwhile, BJP feels that Kejriwal’s resignation is a drama to gain public sympathy as he no longer has the courage to face the voters after being embroiled in major corruption scandals.
A top BJP source said that Kejriwal should have actually resigned on moral grounds long ago and it seems he had done some introspection while he was in jail.
The source said it is up to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to decide the dates for the elections in Delhi and the party is in a strong position in Delhi whenever the elections are held.
Trivedi said, “The people had given their verdict three months ago when the AAP-Congress alliance lost all seven seats in Delhi.”
We will learn from the example of Jharkhand
There is a lesson here for AAP from the Jharkhand example, where before going to jail, Hemant Soren resigned from the CM post and made his trusted and experienced Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) leader Champai Soren the CM instead of a family member.
However, when Hemant Soren came out on bail and became CM again, Champai Soren said he was humiliated and decided to leave the party. Champai Soren has now joined the BJP ahead of the Jharkhand elections, which could hurt JMM’s prospects.
However, AAP is clear that if the party wins the upcoming Delhi elections, Kejriwal will be the CM and there will be a stop-gap arrangement till February. Kejriwal has demanded that the elections in Delhi be postponed to November and held along with the elections in Maharashtra.
Will Sunita Kejriwal be the new CM of Delhi? BJP also made the same claim- Kejriwal wants to give the post to his wife
