All eyes on Kejriwal as BJP sends invite for oath ceremony

AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal continues to be out of sight since his party lost elections to the BJP on February 8 and it remains to be seen if he will make a public appearance for the swearing in of Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta on Thursday.

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Kejriwal has been invited by the BJP for the oath-taking ceremony of the Delhi government.

The AAP supremo was last seen on February 8 in a video message conceding defeat and congratulating the BJP for winning the Delhi Assembly elections.

Since then, Kejriwal has neither attended any political event nor posted any political messages on social media.

It was only today that he took to X and congratulated Rekha Gupta on becoming the fourth woman chief minister of Delhi.

In between, Kejriwal met Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and Shiv Sena UBT leader Aaditya Thackeray but did not personally share social media updates about these meetings.

Even today, Kejriwal stayed away from a crucial meeting with Delhi AAP unit’s office-bearers and executive members to assess the reasons behind poll loss, gaps and the way forward.

Gopal Rai, AAP’s Babarpur MLA and party in-charge for Delhi, chaired the meeting.

Interestingly, the meeting was on at the AAP office on Pt Ravi Shankar Shukla Lane in Lutyens’ zone, barely 250 metre from Kejriwal’s residence —- 5, Feroze Shah Road.

Queries about where the former CM was and what he was doing revealed that Kejriwal was privately meeting senior AAP leaders, making assessment of where the party went wrong and planning the road ahead. He has so far met Mann, Gopal Rai, Atishi, Manish Sisodia, Sandeep Pathak and Raghav Chadha, among others.

Meanwhile, former Delhi CM Atishi, Manish Sisodia and Gopal Rai are holding fort in public and are visible in press conferences and political circuits.

Keeping a low profile, Kejriwal did not make a public appearance even after the February 15 stampede at New Delhi railway station that killed 18 people. “The tragic death of the devotees going to Maha Kumbh in the accident at New Delhi railway station is extremely sad and painful. May God give peace to their soul. My condolences to all the families who lost their loved ones in the accident,” Kejriwal posted on X on February 16, a day after the incident.

On February 17, after an earthquake of 4 magnitude on the Richter scale hit Delhi, Kejriwal again tweeted, “I pray for the safety of everyone.”

On February 17 itself, Kejriwal also skipped a Sonepat court hearing over his “poisonous remark” about the Yamuna river. The hearing has been adjourned to March 20 now.

A review of his X timeline shows that the former Delhi CM, after losing assembly elections, has been tweeting occasionally. He has posted seven tweets between February 12 and today — among them tributes to Sant Shiromani Guru Ravi Das ji; condolences on the demise of AAP worker Arun Yadav; homage to soldiers martyred in the Pulwama attack on February 14, 2019 and salutations to Chhatrapati Shivaji on his birth anniversary on Wednesday.