Arvind Kejriwal will helm the party's bid for Punjab, where AAP has galvanized large public support.
Highlights
- Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal was on 10-day meditation course
- Back at work, he furthers plans for state elections
- He will handle Punjab, others divided between Goa and Gujarat
An intense 10-day meditation course has delivered Arvind Kejriwal back to Delhi, apparently reinvigorated.
The 47-year-old Chief Minister, who completed his
vipassana course in the hill station of Dharamsala yesterday, has advanced his ambitious plans for the nearing state elections, assigning duties to top leaders from his Aam Aadmi Party or AAP.
Mr Kejriwal will helm the party's bid for Punjab, where AAP has galvanized large public support so far. Goa is to be managed by Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, and Health Minister Satyendar Jain. The pair of former editor Ashutosh and Water Minister Kapil Mishra are in charge of Gujarat.
Each leader has reportedly been instructed to spend at least 15 days a month, starting September, in the states allocated to them.
But there's not exactly plenty of AAP leadership to go around. As Deputy Chief Minister, Mr Sisodia is in charge of 10 departments. And the monsoon, with marathon traffic jams and water-logging that forced residents into DIY mode, has led to criticism of the government as either inept or inert.
Mr Kejriwal says that existing laws place basic solutions out of his reach because responsibility and authority are scattered between a patchwork of administrative bodies, some of which are not accountable to him. But while he was on his break, a crucial court order found he had incorrectly claimed that most decision-making powers in the capital rest with him. Instead, the Delhi High Court found that as a union territory, Delhi's top boss is Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, who acts as the centre's representative.
AAP has said the Lieutenant Governor acts more as "an agent" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in working to neutralize attempts made by Mr Kejriwal to deliver better governance and desiccate corruption. But the court verdict on August 4 said a range of decisions taken by Mr Kejriwal without Mr Jung's assent are invalid, while the Lieutenant Governor is not obliged to consult the government in several policy decisions.
AAP vaulted, Dipa Karmakar style, into first place in the Delhi election in February 2015, losing just three of 70 constituencies and improving vastly upon its earlier hold in the capital. Mr Kejriwal ,who has earlier committed to making Delhi his only point of attention, has been campaigning in Gujarat, Goa and Punjab to open up a new front of competition for the traditional combatants, the BJP and the Congress.