A year after he resigned for not having enough numbers in the House to pass the Anti-Corruption Bill, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his 66 party MlAs walked back with panache in the Delhi Assembly on Monday. Nearly two weeks after their thumping victory in the polls, the first session of the sixth Delhi Assembly began with Kejriwal, his Cabinet and other MlAs taking the oath of office. Besides, Shahdara MlA Ram Niwas Goyal was elected the Speaker, while Shailmar Bagh MlA Bandana Kumari was elected as the Deputy Speaker.
On Tuesday, the second day of the special Assembly session, lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung will address the House. Kejriwal’s Cabinet is likely to discuss key issues, promised in their manifesto, like free water and 50 per cent reduction in power tariffs in the House. The visitors’ gallery, which was packed with the families of MlAs and other party supporters, welcomed Kejriwal with a thundering applause. So much was the enthusiasm that the officials of the Vidhan Sabha had to silence the supporters as sloganeering reached its peak when the AAP convener took the oath of office at 2.15 pm. later, the CM also walked down to the Opposition bench and shook hands with all the three BJP MlAs. Protem Speaker Fateh Singh, who is AAP’s Gokulpuri MlA, administered the oath to all the MlAs and also floored the election of Ram Niwas Goyal as the Speaker.
Kejriwal occupied the same bench, which he did in the last Assembly Session, sharing it with his deputy Manish Sisodia while the Opposition benches were occupied by three BJP MlAs — BJP MlAs Vijender Gupta, OP Sharma and Jagdish Pradhan. In the previous Assembly, AAP was running a minority Government and had only 28 MlAs in the House.
Apart from Kejriwal, the only person who got an equally loud applause from the MlAs and the visitors was SK Bagga, AAP MlA from Krishna Nagar who defeated BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi. After Goyal’s election, as per the rule, he first permitted Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia to read out their congratulatory messages. This was followed by Goyal inviting Rohini MlA and leader of BJP’s legislature party Vijender Gupta to do the same. However, the Speaker objected when Gupta raised the issue of not allowing the media to enter the Delhi Secretariat.