Atishi must not play dummy chief minister

If Smriti Irani is chosen by the BJP to lead its Delhi campaign, then Atishi will have to build a strong pro-people image in the short time left with a spate of populist measures

Sooner than later, Delhi’s youngest Chief Minister Atishi, will have to reinvent herself as a fully empowered executive head of the government. The ghost of Arvind Kejriwal looking benignly over her shoulder will do her no good.

The empty chair kept by her side in the chief minister’s office will have to go. The citizens of Delhi will want a powerful chief minister, and not just a stand-in for Kejriwal.

Kejriwal’s trial in the liquor scam is unlikely to end any time soon. He seems to have acknowledged that he is unlikely to be discharged before the Assembly elections in Delhi due in February 2025, when he spoke about being certified innocent by “the court of the people”.

Atishi has deliberately chosen to portray herself as a ‘dummy’ chief minister with real power flowing from her mentor Kejriwal. She is nonetheless taking executive decisions such as the announcement of an increase in minimum wages for unorganised sector workers in Delhi and the implementation of the ‘Mukhya Mantri Mahila Samman Yojana’ which will give Rs 1, 000 per month to poor women between the age of 18 and 60. Yet so far the signal is that these executive decisions are not her own but extra-constitutional.

She has used every opportunity to display her loyalty to Kejriwal — from touching his feet after taking oath as chief minister to a well-publicised visit to his favourite Hanuman temple in Delhi’s Connaught Place. In Kejriwal’s style, she proclaimed that Lord Hanuman has protected the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its government in Delhi from his ‘enemies’ who were trying to split the party and stymie the Delhi’s government’s people-centric policies and programmes.

Hanuman, she said was “our ‘Sankatmochan’ (saviour) protecting us in all the crises, to continue working for the people of Delhi and to bring back Arvind Kejriwal as chief minister in the elections.”

Such a display of the religious rhetoric favoured by Kejriwal was bound to be infectious. One of her ministerial colleagues and contender for her job, Kailash Gahlot, also declared, “It is Tuesday today, the day of Hanumanji, and I will work like the Hanuman of Arvind Kejriwal and clear all his pending works. The AAP worked well under his leadership and tried to establish Ram Rajya."

Such sycophancy will certainly keep them both on Kejriwal’s radar, but will it endear them to Delhi’s voters? They will certainly hope to be nominated by Kejriwal to lead the next government if AAP wins a majority in Delhi. Kejriwal’s bail conditions, as they are now, rule out the possibility of his becoming the next chief minister until he is discharged in the case.

If Atishi must lead AAP as its possible chief ministerial face in the February elections, she cannot go to the people as a dummy chief minister. Political circumstances may compel her to reinvent her image as an aggressive votary and implementer of the welfare policies her party is identified with.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main challenger to AAP in Delhi, is likely to run an aggressive campaign against Kejriwal and his party’s alleged corruption. With the possibility of losing in many Assembly elections this year — Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand — its top leadership will need to notch a victory in the national capital for its survival. It is, therefore, likely to choose a pugnacious face to head a belligerent campaign.

There is already talk in BJP circles that this face could be former minister Smriti Irani. Having lost the Amethi Lok Sabha seat to the Gandhi family factotum, Kishori Lal Sharma earlier this year, Irani appears to be at a political loose end. Chafing under the Amethi setback, Irani is unlikely to wait till the next general election to try her luck at the hustings.

She recently bought a house in Delhi, staking her commitment to the city just as she had publicised the purchase of a house in Amethi by performing rituals of ‘griha pravesh’ two months before the 2024 general elections. She has also been given charge of the BJP’s membership drive in seven out of 14 district units of the party in Delhi.

Her party’s leaders have interpreted these developments as an indication of her growing involvement in the Delhi BJP. Her relationship of loyalty and trustworthiness to her leader Narendra Modi, moreover, mirrors Atishi’s relationship with her mentor.

The pre-poll projection of a chief ministerial candidate for Delhi by the BJP is not empty speculation. There have been discussions within the BJP’s leadership on this issue. The party has not projected a chief ministerial face before elections since the electoral debacle of Kiran Bedi in 2015.

With Modi’s magic seemingly on the wane domestically, choosing a bellicose national face to take on Kejriwal and more especially Atishi as his stand-in, may not be a bad option for the BJP. With her rhetorical flourishes, Irani with a relatively clean image can pin down Kejriwal and his party’s top leadership allegedly involved in the liquor scam. As a woman leader with a public presence, she will be more than a match for Atishi.

At a recent meeting of the BJP held on the day Kejriwal resigned, media reports say, Irani’s name was discussed in deliberations over the usefulness of projecting a single face for the Delhi Assembly elections.

If Irani is chosen by the BJP to lead its Delhi campaign, then Atishi will have to build a strong pro-people image in the short time left with a spate of populist measures. She can bow to Kejriwal as often she likes and consult him in private, but her public persona must come out of his shadow.

She cannot chant ‘Kejriwal chaalisa’ at every public occasion. Kejriwal can remain the power behind the throne, but he must not be carried like an albatross around her neck. Atishi will stand her party in good stead in the coming polls only by growing into a pro-people leader in her own right.

(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.