Atishi becomes Delhi’s third woman chief minister; Oppn slams appointment as ‘stopgap’

A major scheme, which she announced as Delhi’s finance minister while presenting the state government’s budget for 2024-25, is to provide an honorarium of Rs 1,000 to eligible women in Delhi under the Prime Minister’s “Mahila Samman Yojana”. Post-poll studies of the last Delhi state assembly elections in 2020 had attributed AAP’s victory to the huge support it received from the women electorate.

With a woman as CM and the introduction of monthly allowance for women, AAP hopes to consolidate its support base among women, a party strategist said. After being elected CM, Atishi had said she would protect the interests of Delhiites and alleged that the BJP would try to “obstruct” the AAP government’s welfare schemes such as free electricity supply, facilities in hospitals and free bus rides for women. But her biggest challenge would be to build cordial relations with the Lt. Governor’s office as she would need his approval for governance as well as welfare and development-related works.

Besides Atishi, Delhi has had two women prime ministers: Sushma Swaraj of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Sheila Dikshit of the Congress. While Swaraj served for only 52 days in 1998, the second-shortest tenure for a woman prime minister, Dikshit is the country’s longest-serving woman prime minister.

Opposition parties in Delhi criticised Atishi’s elevation as a “stopgap measure”. It is a criticism that Atishi, a Rhodes Scholar, did not dispute. Atishi thanked her “Guru” Kejriwal for the “great responsibility” and said she will lead the government under his “guidance”. She said Kejriwal was the real occupier of Delhi’s chief ministerial chair.

Atishi graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi and later studied history at Oxford. In 2013, she rose to prominence as one of the leading spokespersons of AAP. Before that, she had been an activist in Madhya Pradesh for several years.

In 2015, the party leadership sacked her as spokesperson because it felt she was close to Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, two of the founders of AAP, who were expelled from the party. Atishi wrote a letter to the two leaders accusing them of their intransigence in ironing out differences with the party leadership.

From 2015 to 2018, she worked as an advisor to Education Minister Manish Sisodia. In 2019, she contested the Lok Sabha elections from East Delhi seat, where she lost to Gautam Gambhir of the BJP. Before venturing into electoral politics, Atishi had dropped her surname Marlena, a portmanteau of Marx and Lenin. In 2020, Atishi was elected as MLA from Kalkaji Assembly seat.

In 2023, she was inducted into the Delhi cabinet after Sisodia’s arrest in the excise policy case. She was given nearly a dozen portfolios, most of them for a single minister. She defended her party and the government when AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP Swati Maliwal alleged that Kejriwal’s aide Bibhav Kumar had assaulted her. She went on a hunger strike to demand Delhi’s water share from Haryana as the national capital grappled with a water shortage.

Her parents, Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi, were professors at the University of Delhi.

BJP national general secretary Tarun Chugh alleged that Atishi’s appointment as the new chief minister of Delhi posed a “risk to national security” as her parents were involved in a mercy petition for convicted terrorist Afzal Guru, who was hanged in 2013 for his role in the 2001 Parliament attack.

First publication: Sep 17, 2024 | 10:05 PM IST