The BJP will hold a legislature party meeting on Wednesday evening to decide the new chief minister of Delhi. The party won the February 5 assembly elections, ending the Aam Aadmi Party's five-year rule. The meeting will be held at the party's Delhi unit office and is expected to begin around 7 pm. The 48 BJP MLAs will choose the Leader of the House in the Delhi Assembly, who will become the chief minister. The meeting will be held in the presence of BJP's central observers, whose names are yet to be declared. The new chief minister, after being chosen by the party MLAs, will meet Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena at the Raj Niwas to stake claim to power. A grand swearing-in ceremony of the new government is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at Ramleela Ground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other dignitaries are expected to attend the ceremony. The names doing the rounds for the new chief minister include Parvesh Verma, Vijender Gupta, Satish Upadhyay, Pawan Sharma, Ashish Sood, Rekha Gupta, Shikha Rai, Ravinder Indraj Singh, and Kailash Gangwal. Many within the party believe that the BJP leadership could choose a "dark horse" as Delhi's next chief minister.
According to a party statement, besides Singh, party leaders Saroj Pandey and Vinod Tawde are also being sent to Rajasthan as central observers.
Many in the party believe that as was the cases in Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh, the BJP leadership might put its bets on a "dark horse" among the newly-elected MLAs.
Chhattisgarh scores the highest among all four states with 21 per cent of its newly elected lawmakers women.
Rajasthan assembly Speaker C P Joshi is the slender thread that stands between a Congress and BJP government
'We bow to the Janta Janardan. The results in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan indicate that the people of India are firmly with politics of good governance and development'
Rajasthan is reeling under a huge financial burden with the state's debt having gone beyond Rs 5.59 lakh crores. Rajasthan has increased expenditure on education by 203.4 percent, by 105.4 percent on health, by 227.14 percent on housing. Its expenditure on social welfare schemes has increased by almost 2,475 per cent.
Ruling parties held sway in most of the 13 states in the assembly byelection results declared on Saturday, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies wresting seats in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan and the Trinamool Congress sweeping West Bengal.
The Sirsa-headquartered Dera Sacha Sauda has a number of followers in Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and other states.
BJP leader Diya Kumari, who was elected deputy chief minister of Rajasthan along with Prem Chand Bairwa, is a member of erstwhile Jaipur royal family and a two-time MLA.
Seventeen of the 25 ministers in the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan, including Govind Ram Meghwal, who also led the party's campaign committee, lost in the assembly elections.
"All legislators will remain united and stay together till August 14," Congress chief whip Mahesh Joshi said after the CLP meeting chaired by Gehlot.
The Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted fresh searches in poll-bound Rajasthan as part of its money laundering investigation into the alleged Jal Jivan Mission scam.
The Congress is yet to declare candidates on a majority seats as its Central Election Committee will meet on Sunday to finalise names for more seats.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
"I sometimes think of leaving it, but the chief minister's post doesn't leave me," Ashok Gehlot famously said earlier this year, in part as a signal to the Congress top brass not to pick someone else for the job if the party wins the assembly polls.
The MPs who win assembly polls will have to quit one of their seats in the next 14 days.
Shinde welcomed the former Rajasthan minister to the Shiv Sena and said Gudha left the ministerial position for the cause of people.
Along with Sharma, Diya Kumari and Prem Chand Bairwa, who were named as deputy chief ministers in the recently held Bharatiya Janata Party legislature party meeting, will take oath.
'The water crisis is so obvious that people see no point begging for it from politicians.'
The BJP's victory in the Delhi Assembly elections has sparked speculation over who will lead the next government. Several prominent leaders, including Pravesh Verma, Ashish Sood, Pawan Sharma, Vijender Gupta, and Satish Upadhyay, are in the running for the chief minister's post. The party's national leadership is expected to make the final decision, leaving the contenders in a state of anticipation.
In the last six assembly elections, the state voted the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress to power alternately.
Sources said the leadership of the government going forward, if Gehlot is elected as party chief, is likely to be on the meeting agenda.
The meeting was attended by Congress in-charge for Rajasthan Sukhjinder Randhawa, CM Gehlot, RPCC president Govind Singh Dotasra and other leaders.
The MLAs inducted into the Rajasthan cabinet are Meena, Madan Dilawar, Rathore, Gajendra Singh Khimsar, Babulal Kharadi, Jogaram Patel, Suresh Singh Rawat, Avinash Gehlot, Joraram Kumawat, Hemant Meena, Kanhaiya Lal Choudhary and Sumit Godara.
The BJP has played the social engineering card in Rajasthan with an eye on the Lok Sabha election where the party will try and retain all the 25 seats that it had won in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
First-time MLA Rekha Gupta will be the new chief minister of Delhi, capping 11 days of suspense over who will get the top post after the Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power after over 26 years ending the 10-year rule of the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.
The BJP is considering having two deputy chief ministers in the new Delhi government to represent the city as a "mini" India, party leaders said. The move is aimed at accommodating MLAs from different castes, communities, and regional backgrounds. The proposal is under consideration by the national leadership, which will also decide on the chief minister and other ministers. The process of government formation is expected to gain momentum after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns from his foreign visit over the weekend.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
Singh, a veteran Congress leader, was a member of the Upper House of Parliament from Assam for almost three decades.
With the party fielding three Union ministers, besides four other MPs, as candidates in the Madhya Pradesh assembly polls, it may continue with the strategy in Rajasthan.
While condemning the incident of Manipur where two women were paraded naked and molested, Modi on Thursday made a reference to states like Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in context of law and order.
At the mega auction, Mumbai Indians made some strategic buys, in a bid to build a strong team around their solid Indian core consisting of Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Jaspreet Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, and Tilak Varma.
Since 1993, when the BJP came to power after a stint of President's rule, the state has alternated between the Congress and the BJP.
Union minister and the BJP's election in-charge for Rajasthan Pralhad Joshi, co-in-charge Nitin Patel, the party's in-charge for Rajasthan Arun Singh, state president C P Joshi, Union ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kailash Chaudhary, Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Rajendra Rathore, Deputy Leader of Opposition and former state president Satish Poonia and other leaders were present at the meeting, which is likely to continue till late, the sources said.
The BJP is hopeful of improving its performance in Dalit-dominated constituencies in Delhi ahead of the February 5 assembly polls, following a sustained outreach campaign. The party failed to win any of the 12 SC reserved constituencies in the 2015 and 2020 elections. The party has been out of power in the city since 1998.
The BJP holds 28 of the 59 Rajya Sabha seats that will soon face election.
Rajasthan Congress leaders Jyoti Mirdha and Sawai Singh Chaudhary switched to the Bharatiya Janata Party in Jaipur on Monday ahead of assembly elections due later this year.
First-time MLA Bhajan Lal Sharma was sworn in as the chief minister of Rajasthan at a ceremony attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party's top leadership on Friday, 12 days after the party ousted the Congress in the assembly polls.
On the eve of the counting of votes in Rajasthan, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have started reaching out to independent candidates, including rebels, and smaller parties.
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