NEW DELHI:Capping a momentous election victory march, Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday sworn in as Delhi Chief Minister along with six other ministers, and in a first, decided not to keep any portfolio with himself.
The 46-year-old activist-turned-politician assured that he would make Delhi a corruption-free city and also raised concerns about recent attacks on the churches in the national capital.
“Before the elections, they (BJP) had promised statehood to the people of Delhi. It’s not possible for the Centre to take care of important issues related to governance of the state, so I hope the BJP-led government will fulfil its promise,” Kejriwal said amid cheers from the crowd. The Chief Minister cautioned his party against arrogance, citing it as a reason for the party’s drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and also for the defeat of the BJP and Congress in the Delhi Assembly polls.
Perhaps to indicate that he would not deviate from the agenda, Kejriwal invoked a sense of 2013 deja vu, by starting his address with “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, and ending his speech with AAP’s anthem “Insaan ka ho Insaan se Bhaichara”.
Meanwhile, senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday said the saffron party had made a tactical mistake of not going in for the Assembly poll in Delhi immediately after the Lok Sabha election last year.
The BJP’s base in Delhi is intact, he added.