Delhi’s portfolios have been decided and Arvind Kejriwal, who took oath as the chief minister of the national capital on Sunday along with six ministers, will not hold any portfolio.
As he assigned Cabinet colleagues their ministries while making no major changes from his previous government.
Kejriwal will “monitor” the work of his ministers while ensuring a “direct dialogue” with people. Water Department, which was under Kejriwal during the second half of the previous government, has been given to Satyendra Jain who will also look after Health, Industry, PWD, Power, Home, Urban Development and Irrigation and Flood Control.
Gopal Rai, a Kejriwal confidante, was in charge of the rural development department apart from holding the general administration department, irrigation and flood control and labour.
Kejriwal has retained all the six ministers who served his government in the previous term – his deputy Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Imran Hussain, Gopal Rai, Rajendra Gautam and Kailash Gehlot.
With this he has shut space for new faces like Atishi, Raghav Chadha and Dilip Pandey, who were speculated to be in his new team.
Buoyed by the thumping victory in the Delhi Assembly polls, the AAP aims to take the “Arvind Kejriwal model of development” to Uttar Pradesh and strengthen its base in the state, Senior party leader Sanjay Singh shared on Monday.
“The AAP’s massive membership drive will be launched from Lucknow on February 23 and continue till March 23 where people can become members of the party by physically reaching out to our offices and getting receipts, by giving missed calls or by enrolling through our website,” Singh, a Rajya Sabha member and party’s UP unit incharge, said.
The AAP won 62 seats in the 70-member Delhi Assembly, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged the remaining eight seats.