New Delhi: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor Arvind Kejriwal was sworn-in as Chief Minister of Delhi at Ramlila Maidan in the national capital.
Besides Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Satyender Jain, Gopal Rai, Kailash Gehlot, Imran Hussain, and Rajendra Gautamas took oath as the ministers in Delhi.
But despite the fact that AAP managed to clean sweep in the recently-concluded 2020 Delhi assembly polls with eight women candidates winning, Kejriwal’s new cabinet does not have a single woman.
AAP achieved a landslide victory in the Assembly elections with a clear majority of 62 seats out of 70. This, even as eight AAP women candidates — Atishi Marlena, Rakhi Birla, Raj Kumari Dhillon, Preeti Tomar, Dhanwati Chandela, Parmila Tokas, Bhavna Gaur and Bandana Kumari — emerged victorious in the 2020 assembly polls.
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Also, AAP’s poll campaign had put the spotlight on women’s issues — free bus rides for women, safety etc. This year, AAP had fielded nine female candidates out of which only woman candidate Sarita Singh from Rohtas Nagar suffered defeat. In 2015, the party had fielded six women candidates, all of whom won the election.
Atishi Marlena, who won the election from Kalkaji, has served as a key advisor to the AAP leader Manish Sisodia primarily on education policies that transformed public school education in the capital.
Just like Marlena, incumbent MLA Rakhi Birla from Mangolpuri constituency has also failed to come back to the cabinet in this term even after bagging over 74,100 votes, with a margin of over 30,000 votes and 58 per cent of the vote share.
She was charged with the Cabinet Ministry of Women and Child, Social Welfare and Languages, for a few months in AAP’s first term from 2013 to 2014. During this, period she came to the spotlight as she became the youngest ever cabinet minister of Delhi at the age of 26 and was even called “giant killer” for defeating four-time Congress MLA Raj Kumar Chouhan in 2013 Delhi polls.
Another candidate of AAP, Raj Kumari Dhillon swept Hari Nagar against BJP’s Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga by a margin of over 20,100 votes. Apart from these three, Preeti Tomar (Tri Nagar), Dhanwati Chandela (Rajouri Nagar), Pramila Tokas (RK Puram), Bhavna Gaur (Palam), and Bandana Kumari (Shalimar Bagh) — the other five who won for AAP — do not figure in the new cabinet.
(With inputs from ANI)