New Delhi: Three days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the Delhi assembly elections, speculation is rife about the next chief minister of the national capital as well as the swearing-in date of the new government.
In the election results announced on Saturday (February 8), the BJP won 48 seats in the 70-member Delhi assembly, routing the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which was reduced to 22 seats.
On Sunday, BJP national organisation secretary B.L. Santosh, national vice president and Delhi elections in-charge Jay Panda, co-incharge Atul Garg and state president Virendra Sachdeva met the 48 newly-elected MLAs. All of the BJP’s seven Lok Sabha MPs were also present at the meeting.
“Along with giving guidelines to the MLAs to work under proper organisational and administrative rules, the senior leaders also said that all the MLAs should keep their working style completely transparent. In the meetings, the leaders drew the attention of the MLAs towards the victory message of Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday evening and said that we have to start working for the creation of the developed Delhi as envisioned by the prime minister without losing any time,” Delhi BJP said in a statement.
On Sunday, former Delhi chief minister Atishi met the Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi V.K. Saxena and tendered her resignation. The LG asked her to continue in office till the formation of the new government.
‘New chief minister to be chosen from the newly elected MLAs’
Delhi BJP leaders on Monday said that the chief minister will be decided by the top leadership.
‘There will be a meeting of all MLAs. The party’s top leadership including prime minister, home minister, party president and the top leadership will take a decision. So this is not an issue at all,” said BJP MLA from Gandhi Nagar Arvinder Singh Lovely, who joined the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.
BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj also told reporters outside parliament that “the top leadership will decide [the next chief minister].”
Amid speculation that the chief minister could be from one of the seven BJP Lok Sabha MPs, Yogender Chandolia, North-West Delhi MP, said that the candidate would be picked from among the newly elected MLAs. “The new chief minister should be chosen from the newly elected party MLAs,” he told reporters.
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a four-day trip to France and the US till February 14, it is likely that the swearing-in of the new government and the chief minister’s name will be finalised only after his return, reported the Press Trust of India citing sources.
This is not the first time that there has been a delay in the BJP deciding its chief minister after winning elections in a state. In 2024, the BJP named Mohan Charan Majhi as the chief minister of its first government in Odisha over a week after the election results were announced. In 2023 too, the BJP, after winning the state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, announced the names of its chief ministers almost a week after results were announced.
