NEW DELHI : Activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal will take oath as Delhi’s seventh Chief Minister on Saturday at historic Ramlila Maidan here, capping his party’s stunning electoral debut in the December 4 assembly polls.
The date for the swearing-in ceremony was finalised at a meeting Kejriwal held with Chief Secretary D M Spolia.
Top officials in Delhi Government said Kejriwal and six AAP MLAs will be sworn-in in a public ceremony at 12 PM in the Ramlila Maidan, the venue of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement two years ago.
The cabinet ministers to take oath along with Kejriwal are Manish Sisodia, Rakhi Birla, Somnath Bharti, Saurabh Bhardwaj, Girish Soni and Satendra Jain.
Born in Haryana and a resident of Kausambi in nearby Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, the IIT-Kharagpur graduate in Mechanical Engineering, had defeated three-time Chief Minister Shiela Dikshit in New Delhi constituency by a huge margin of over 25,000 votes.
45-year-old Kejriwal had met Lt Governor Najeeb Jung on Monday and handed over him a letter staking claim to form Government with outside support from the Congress.
Following this, Jung had sent a proposal to President Pranab Mukherjee detailing AAP’s stake to form the Government. The President approved the proposal yesterday and left it to the Lt Governor to finalise the date for swearing-in ceremony in consultation with the Chief Minister-designate.
One-year-old AAP had made an electrifying debut in elections winning 28 seats in the 70-member Assembly and decimating Congress which bagged only eight seats. The BJP, along with its ally SAD’s one seat, had 32 MLAs but the party declined to form the Government, citing lack of majority.
Sources in AAP said Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi, Santosh Hegde and all those associated with the anti-corruption movement will be invited to the swearing-in ceremony. (AGENCIES)
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