Kejriwal meets Lt Governor, stakes claim to form Delhi govt

Aap Aadmi Party convenor Arvind Kejriwal on Monday met Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung to stake claim to form a government in the national capital.

'I told the L-G the AAP is ready to form government. He told me that he will send the proposal to the President and will get back after his direction,' Kejriwal said.

The date for the swearing-in ceremony will be decided after directions from the President and Ramlila Maidan will be the venue, he said.

He added that the AAP's 28 MLAs will take outside support of Congress' eight MLAs to form the government.

Earlier, the AAP said that it will form the government in the national capital with the outside support from the Congress party after it conducted a referendum to seek public opinion ending weeks of political uncertainty.

'We were called by the Lieutenant Governor to discuss government formation on December 14. We had sought time to take a decision as ours is a party of common people and we want to their views,' said Kejriwal after the two-hour meeting of the political affairs committee.

'We got responses from the citizens through website, phone calls, SMS and by holding public meetings and most of them favoured government formation by AAP,' Kejriwal said at AAP's office at Kausambi in Ghaziabad.

Read more: Here's how Kejriwal became the little, big man of Indian politics Read more: Arvind Kejriwal - The small man dominating the big picture

Party leader Manish Sisodia said that 74% people in Delhi favoured AAP forming a government and of the 280 jan sabhas held across Delhi, 257 responded with an yes for the party.

'We got 6,97,310 reactions through SMS and the internet and after culling duplicate numbers and IDs we recieved opinions from 5,23,183 people. Out of which 2,65,966 are from Delhi and 1,97,086, that is 74%, said that the party should form a government.'

Sisodia said that Kejriwal, under whom the party won 28 seats in the 70-member Delhi assembly, 'will be the chief minister'.

'We fought the elections under his leadership and it is the opinion of all the 28 MLAs that he (Kejriwal) will be chief minister (of Delhi),' said Sisodia.

The December 4 'Fulfil promises' elections had thrown up a hung assembly in Delhi with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerging the largest party with 32 seats (including one seat for ally Akali Dal) and AAP winning 28 with the Congress reduced to just eight in the 70-member assembly.

After the BJP decided not to form the government, AAP was invited to form the government and the Congress offered to help it reach the magic figure of 36 seats.

AAP told L-G Jung that it needed 10 days' time to decide its course of action and then held what it called a referendum asking the public if it should take outside support from the Congress to form the government.

Congratulate Arvind Kejriwal for being given an opportunity to serve the State of Delhi as CM. I am sure he would fulfil his promises.

- digvijaya singh (@digvijaya_28) December 23, 2013

Outgoing chief minister and Congress leader Sheila Dikshit wished the AAP good luck and asked the party to fulfil the promises it made to the people.

'We have not promised unconditional support to AAP. It is for their programmes, let's see if they deliver,' said Dikshit, who was defeated by Kejriwal in her New Delhi constituency by over 25,000 votes.

Dikshit said that her party has always talked of outside support.

AAP seeking Cong help a betrayal of people's verdict: Harsh Vardhan

'Our support is dependent on their performance. I hope he can fulfill his promises. We were aware that it is impossible to fulfill those promises.'

BJP accused the AAP of 'betraying the people of Delhi' after the party's decision to form a minority government with outside support of the Congress.

'The AAP fought the election on the anti-corruption plank and now they have taken support from a party that has been completely rejected by the people of Delhi. This proves that AAP is hungry for power,' Harsh Vardhan said.

'This is a betrayal of the wishes of the people of Delhi,' he added.

Criticising the AAP for holding the referendum, Harsh Vardhan said the opinion of a few hundred cannot supersede the mandate of lakhs of people.

'Around 70% of the people of Delhi had given their mandate and chosen their representative and now you go out on streets and ask some hundreds of people to give a mandate that is an insult to the real dimension of democracy,' the BJP leader said.

(With PTI, IANS and ANI inputs) HT POLL: