The Union home ministry on Tuesday notified the appointment of education expert Atishi Marlena, and AAP’s chief spokesman Saurabh Bharadwaj as Delhi’s new ministers—a week after their names were announced.
Marlena will be the first woman in the Delhi cabinet since Rakhi Birla—who served in the 49-day Arvind Kejriwal government in 2013-14. AAP has long ignored calls to include women, and its cabinet remained a men’s club even after being re-elected in 2020. Marlena, the party’s intellectual face was elected an MLA in the same election.
Kejriwal’s predecessor Sheila Dikshit, had women ministers such as professor Kiran Walia, and Krishna Tirath.
Marlena and Bharadwaj fill the vacancies of Satyendar Jain, and Manish Sisodia—both behind bars under investigation for corruption—who resigned last week. Sisodia was sent to a fortnight’s judicial custody after eight days in the CBI’s custody in a case on his liquor policy.
CM Kejriwal issued a sombre message on the eve of Holi.
He said: “We have become a nation whose Prime Minister punishes patriots and celebrated education and health reformers like Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain but embraces those who swindle lakhs of crores of public money…“If you all also believe that what the Prime Minister of India is doing is not correct and that our country is heading in the wrong direction, then I appeal to you all to also take some time out after celebrating Holi and do ‘dhyaan’ and pray for the betterment of our country, along with me.”
Deputy CM Sisodia ran the Delhi government and left Kejriwal free to indulge in political expansion. His arrest has left the party shell-shocked with the immediate defection of former Bengaluru police commissioner Bhaskar Rao to the BJP, and several flip flops in the selection of new ministers.
AAP now faces a police case for getting schoolchildren to write letters in support of Sisodia who was also the education minister. However, it drew support from most opposition parties except the Congress which was the first to make the liquor policy a political campaign to oust the AAP government.
