Arvind Kejriwal has chosen Manish Sisodia as Deputy Chief Minister in his Cabinet, which will include four new faces, Aam Aadmi Party sources said on Thursday.
The four Ministers from Mr. Kejriwal’s short-lived government last year who could not make the cut this time are Rakhi Birla, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Somnath Bharti and Girish Soni. Replacing them are first-time MLAs Jitendra Tomar, Sandeep Kumar, Asim Ahmed Khan and Gopal Rai, sources said. Shahadra MLA Ramniwas Goel would be the Speaker.
With the Bharatiya Janata Party having only three MLAs in the Delhi Assembly, the Aam Aadmi Party is likely to give the go-by to the convention of offering the Deputy Speaker’s post to the Opposition.
Bandana Kumari from Shalimar Bag, one of the six women MLAs in the party, is likely to appointed Deputy Speaker. Kapil Mishra, a newly elected MLA, was in contention for a Minister’s post, but after much deliberation, Gopal Rai, another first-time MLA, got the nod.
Mr. Mishra, son of a former East Delhi Mayor and BJP leader, is now tipped to be the frontrunner for the post of parliamentary secretary of the Chief Minister.
The AAP’s top leadership is learnt to have told the selected candidates that their performance as Ministers would be monitored and in the five-year tenure ahead, more names could be considered if the need was felt.
Among the Ministers dropped from the short-lived Kejriwal Cabinet of last year, Somnath Bharti lost out because of a case against him. A party spokesperson said that only after he was cleared of the charges could any other role be considered for the former Law Minister.
In the names submitted to the Lieutenant-Governor, Chief Minister-designate Arvind Kejriwal had tried to allocate responsibility to various groups who had backed him in the elections.
“Even as Manish Sisodia is widely acknowledged as the de facto number two in AAP, selecting him as the deputy CM was necessary to send a signal that Mr. Kejriwal might take up a bigger role in the future at the national stage,” said a party leader.
