New Delhi:

The BJP legislative party will meet on Monday afternoon to pick the next Chief Minister of Delhi, sources have told NDTV. The Legislature party leader will be picked more than a week after the BJP won a massive victory in Delhi, sweeping out Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party.

The delay was owing to the France and US tour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who returned to Delhi on Saturday.

Sources said the observer for the process could be named tonight or early tomorrow morning. The MLAs’ meet could be held in the office of the Delhi BJP.

The BJP, which is coming to power in the national capital — a decade after it won in the centre– after 26 years, is planning to turn the oath ceremony of its new Chief Minister into a grand event. 

More than 200 MPs and former MPs of the party, Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers of all NDA-ruled states will be present and al the state leaders and workers will be present.

The party has set its eye on is Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, sources said.

Multiple names for the top post are doing the rounds since the results made a thumping BJP victory clear last week. 

Among the front-runners is Parvesh Verma, the son of the BJP’s former Chief Minister Saheb Singh Verma. The other names doing the rounds include former Delhi BJP chief and Malviya Nagar MLA Satish Upadhyay, senior party leader Vijender Gupta, newly elected Janakpuri MLA Ashish Sood and Uttam Nagar MLA Pawan Sharma.

Sources indicated that the BJP can even pick a woman to be the next Chief Minister. Four of the BJP’s new MLAs are women — Neelam Pahalwan, Rekha Gupta, Poonam Sharma and Shikha Roy. 

The party won 48 of Delhi’s 70 seats, a whopping 41 more than 2020, and kept AAP, which won 62 seats that year, confined to just 22.