AAP forms government in Delhi with Kejriwal as chief minister

The new government in the capital city was sworn in on Boxing Day at the iconic Ramlila Maidan where anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare began his hunger strike against political corruption in 2011.

In its first ever elections, the AAP won 28 seats out of a total 70 seats quashing the ruling Congress party which won just eight seats. While the Opposition party, BJP, secured 32 seats to emerge as the single largest party, it failed to form a government.  AAP too was short of eight seats to claim a majority.

Ending weeks of speculation, the news of AAP forming a government in Delhi came after Kejriwal met the Delhi governor agreeing to form it with support from the Congress party. Together with Congress’ support, AAP will have 36 legislators and succeed in building the government.

However, Congress has stated that its support to Kejriwal’s AAP is not unconditional but will be issue-by-issue based.

AAP emerged as a new party to contest elections with an agenda to end corruption in India and blamed main parties BJP and Congress for not doing much to eradicate corruption from India. While AAP is not a natural ally of any of the main parties, it consulted people of India on whether it should form a government in Delhi.

The AAP claimed it received over 7.5-lakh responses from the general public urging it to form a government.

After seeing support from the general public for its referendum of sorts, Kejriwal met the governor and has decided to go ahead to form AAP’s first local government in Delhi with support from Congress.