NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Atishi Marlena Singh will take over as the new chief minister of the country's capital territory of New Delhi after Arvind Kejriwal resigned, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party announced on Tuesday.
The announcement was made by AAP chief Kejriwal himself at a meeting with AAP legislators in the capital. AL Jazeera reported.
The development comes after current CM Kejriwal announced on Sunday, a day after he obtained bail from the country's Supreme Court in a corruption case, that he would be resigning from the post.
Announcing his resignation as chief minister at a meeting with AAP workers, the politician said he would only return to the post if people certified his honesty by voting for him in the upcoming Delhi elections. He asked the election commission to advance the Delhi elections to November, from February 2025.
The politician is a fierce critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a former anti-corruption crusader whose decade-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) quickly rose to mainstream politics, though its influence is relatively minor compared to older opposition parties.
The 43-year-old new CM candidate is a key member of the AAP and has held several portfolios in the city government, including finance and education.
She is currently the only woman minister in the Delhi cabinet and holds the most number of portfolios in the AAP government, she said. India today.
Who is the new Delhi Chief Ministerial candidate?
Atishi entered politics in 2013 when he joined the AAP and later took part in the Jal Satyagraha protests in 2015, the report said. Economic times.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, he faced former Indian cricketer and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Gautam Gambhir but lost to the latter by a margin of over 450,000 votes.
However, he contested from South Delhi's Kalkaji constituency in the 2020 Delhi Legislative Assembly election and won against another BJP candidate and managed to win by more than 10,000 votes.
Atishi, a BA and MA in History, is a Chevening Scholar and also attended Magdalen College, Oxford University.
During her time in the AAP government, the CM candidate contributed significantly to Delhi's education sector through several initiatives such as improving government schools, strengthening regulations against arbitrary fee hikes by private schools and introducing a 'happiness' curriculum, among other decisions.
