BJP workers gather to celebrate the party’s win in the Delhi Assembly election.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: As parleys over the appointment of the next Delhi chief minister gain pace, the BJP, while finalising the new cabinet, may even opt for two deputy CMs as part of its political messaging in AAP stronghold Punjab and poll-bound Bihar.
On Tuesday, a section of the newly elected BJP MLAs met party president JP Nadda in the national capital. Though the new cabinet may take final shape only after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s return from France and the US, the party, which was successful in wresting back power in the national capital after 27 years, has started to weigh in on the various options.
Though not a full state unto itself, political developments in Delhi tend to have nationwide reverberations, and the appointment of two deputies to the chief minister allows the BJP to address much wider and more diverse constituencies.
Punjab has been the BJP’s Achilles heel for a long time. Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government in Punjab currently enjoys a comfortable majority, with Congress as the main opposition.
The saffron party and its ideological mentor, the RSS, have found it difficult to make inroads in the state.
The farmer’s agitation and severance of ties with the Akali Dal have left the BJP with neither a core constituency nor an ally.
Rajouri Garden MLA Manjinder Singh Sirsa, the former Akali leader and Delhi Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee chief, is being seen as a possible Sikh representative in the cabinet and even as a deputy chief minister.
The BJP may also consider appointing a deputy with an eye on the Bihar Assembly polls slated for December 2025. Bihar has also been a tricky state for the BJP to navigate. As a junior partner to Nitish Kumar’s JD(U), the BJP has been in power in the state on many occasions.
But Bihar also happens to be the only heartland state where the party has not been able to hoist a chief minister.
The national capital territory of Delhi is contiguous to Jat-dominated constituencies in Haryana, UP, and some areas of Rajasthan. Some of the BJP’s prominent Jat faces in UP lost the LS polls.
In Haryana too, the party has sought to mobilise non-Jat voters against the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress. Former MP Pravesh Verma, who defeated Arvind Kejriwal from New Delhi, emerges as a strong contender for the top-three position if BJP attempts to counterbalance its political positioning in the neighbouring states in Delhi’s cabinet selection.
In its current line-up of 14 chief ministers, the BJP does not have a woman face. There are speculations that the party may want to correct this anomaly in Delhi.