Aam Aadmi Party Invites Prime Minister Narendra Modi For Arvind Kejriwal's Swearing-In Ceremony On Sunday

The Aam Aadmi Party has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi for Arvind Kejriwal’s swearing-in ceremony on Sunday. The grand oath-taking ceremony will take place at iconic Ramlila Maidan. So far, the AAP leadership had maintained that the oath-taking ceremony will not be a political event. Instead, ‘only people of Delhi’ will be invited for the ceremony, AAP’s Gopal Rai had said on Thursday. Interestingly, PM Modi is scheduled to attend an event in Varanasi, his parliamentary constituency. It is yet to be seen whether he will attend the Sunday event or not. In 2015 also , PM Modi had skipped the AAP’s invitation.

Kejriwal met Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Wednesday morning to discuss the February 16 event. Kejriwal will take oath as Delhi Chief Minister for the third time on February 16. With this, Kejriwal equals Sheila Dikshit’s feat. The Congress stalwart was the only politician, who took oath as Delhi Chief Minister for three times. While the detractors say that the announcement of freebies just before the Assembly Elections helped the Aam Aadmi Party, Kejriwal said that his return was victory of development agenda. The engineer-turned-politician has become the force to reckon with in Delhi. However, AAP’s national aspirations have met with little success.

On Tuesday, Kejriwal won New Delhi assembly seat by a margin of 21, 697 votes. Kejriwal defeated BJP's Sunil Yadav to become MLA for the third consecutive time from the New Delhi seat. Kejriwal got 46, 758 votes while Sunil Yadav got 25, 061 votes. Indian National Congress's Romesh Sabharwal remained at distant third with just 3,206 votes, according to Election Commission data. Interestingly, this VVIP constituency saw a maximum number of candidates contesting the polls. Apart from Kejriwal, 27 other candidates contested from New Delhi seat.

In the 2015 Assembly elections also, Kejriwal had emerged victorious from the New Delhi Vidhan Sabha seat. He had defeated BJP's Nupur Sharma by a margin of more than 31,000 votes.  Nine years ago, Kejriwal slipped into the political frame behind Anna Hazare during the Lokpal movement in 2011 before quickly enlarging his canvas, first as a satyagrah activist and then as founder of the cleverly named Aam Aadmi Party that took on the might of the BJP to reclaim Delhi for a third time on Tuesday. The name of his party as carefully chosen as his public persona perhaps, Delhi's 51-year-old chief minister is the embodiment of the everyday man but one who has tailored his politics and campaign in keeping with the times.