New Delhi, Feb 12: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor and Delhi chief minister-designate Arvind Kejriwal will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday and invite him for his swearing-in ceremony at the Ramlila Maidan on Valentine’s Day.
AAP leaders said Kejriwal had sought a meeting with Modi after the party won a historic mandate in the Delhi assembly elections.
"We had sought time from the Prime Minister, Kejriwal will be meeting him... at 10.30am. He will also extend an invitation to him for the oath ceremony on February 14 (Saturday)," a party source said.
Kejriwal's meeting with the PM comes a day after he met Union home minister Rajnath Singh and urban affairs minister Venkaiah Naidu, and sought full statehood for Delhi.
Speaking to home minister Singh, Kejriwal also underlined the need for "constructive cooperation" between the central and the Delhi governments and noted that political differences should not come in the way of taking the city forward.
Kejriwal may also raise the statehood issue in his meeting with Modi and invite key other members of his team to the oath-taking ceremony on Saturday when the former social activist will be sworn in as chief minister, exactly a year after he resigned from the post. The AAP chief had quit on February 14, 2014, after a controversial and brief stint.
Kejriwal is also planning to invite his one-time colleague and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who was the BJP's CM candidate in the Delhi polls. Bedi too had congratulated Kejriwal asking him to make Delhi a world-class city.
The AAP won 67 seats in the 70-member Delhi House on Tuesday, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed a distant second place with merely three seats. The Congress, reeling from a string of defeats since it was routed in the Lok Sabha polls, did not even open its account.
In the run-up to the Delhi polls, the battle for the city-state saw a fierce war of words between the PM, who added thunder to the BJP's campaign, and Kejriwal, who lost to Modi in Varanasi in the April-May general elections.
But, Modi congratulated Kejriwal after the AAP's poll triumph and promised him Centre's co-operation in the development of Delhi.
While Kejriwal would like Modi to attend his swearing-in ceremony, it is to seen whether he will be present, as the PM already has a date with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar.
According to the PM's scheduled programme, Modi will share stage with Pawar in the latter's stronghold of Baramati on Saturday while inaugurating the new Krishi Vigyan Kendra building, a project approved by the NCP chief when he was the Union agriculture minister in the UPA government.
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