The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Atishi became Delhi’s chief minister on Saturday (September 21) after being administrated the oaths of office and secrecy by lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena.
Legislators belonging to her Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) unanimously chose her to succeed Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday after the latter resigned from the post and proposed that she be Delhi’s next chief minister.
Speaking to the media after her swearing-in, Atishi thanked Kejriwal for entrusting her with the chief ministerial position and said it was an “emotional moment” as he was no longer chief minister.
The capital city’s eighth chief minister and third woman chief minister said Kejriwal “understood the pain of common and poor Delhiites” and was no longer CM because the BJP-led Union government had “hatched a conspiracy against him”.
“The BJP’s Union government … filed false cases against him, arrested him in these false cases, kept him in jail for over six months, did everything possible to break and suppress him, but [Kejriwal] did not break,” Atishi said.
Referring to Kejriwal’s being bailed by the Supreme Court in the money laundering and corruption cases against him in relation to the Delhi liquor policy case, Atishi said he resigned instead of continuing as chief minister as he wanted to “go to the people’s court”.
She also referenced the Supreme Court’s saying that the CBI – which is probing the corruption case against Kejriwal – “must dispel [the] notion of [its] being a caged parrot”.
Atishi called on voters to “make Kejriwal chief minister again” in the assembly elections due by February next year, lest the BJP “conspire” to end his government’s schemes.
After Saxena swore Atishi in as chief minister, he also swore in the AAP’s Saurabh Bhardwaj, Gopal Rai, Kailash Gahlot, Imran Hussain and Mukesh Ahlawat into the new government’s council of ministers.
Kejriwal was present at the swearing-in ceremony, PTI reported.
Atishi and West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee are the country’s only women chief ministers.
The BJP’s Sushma Swaraj and the Congress’s Sheila Dikshit were Delhi’s other women chief ministers.
Atishi staked her claim to form a new government after Kejriwal resigned from his post. His bail conditions ordered by the Supreme Court restricted him from performing essential duties, such as signing papers.
He announced his decision to quit on Sunday. He has requested for elections to be advanced from February next year to November this year.
The apex court’s verdict granting him bail in the CBI case came after it granted bail to co-accused Bharat Rashtra Samithi MLC K. Kavitha, AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh, and others in the liquor policy case.
The Enforcement Directorate and the CBI allege that Kejriwal’s AAP government granted liquor licenses to certain traders in exchange for bribes. The policy has been scrapped.