A day after she joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former top cop Kiran Bedi has said she wants to take on former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in his constituency New Delhi.
"I'm ready to fight Kejriwal directly in his constituency, I don't care if I lose," Bedi, who was once part of Team Anna along with Kejriwal, told NDTV on Friday.
Till 2011, Bedi and Kejriwal were core team members of the anti-corruption movement fronted by Gandhian Anna Hazare, before Kejriwal split away to form the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Bedi said she's ready for what could be the fight of a lifetime. In the December 2013 elections Kejriwal has wrested the seat from then chief minister Sheila Dikshit in a high-profile fight.
The BJP is set to decide on January 19 on Bedi's role in the upcoming Delhi elections, but at a press conference on Thursday she dropped broad hints that she sees herself as a candidate for the top job.
"I want to make Delhi the capital of this country in the real sense. Delhi ko dil banana hai. Whatever experience, time and energy I have, I will devote to the nation and I am very happy the BJP has given me the opportunity to do so," she said.
Seated next to BJP chief Amit Shah and finance minister Arun Jaitley, Bedi said: "My aim is to see that Delhi gets a stable, clear-headed, honest and courageous government."
These remarks were picked up as signals revealing her desire to become the next Delhi chief minister after the February 7 poll if the BJP fares better than the 31 seats it managed in the 2013 election.
Party chief Shah had not named the constituency she would be contesting from and left it to the BJP parliamentary board to take a call on the next chief minister.
"Every BJP worker has the ability to become chief minister. Bedi is also a BJP worker now," Shah said.
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