There, But Not Quite: The Curious Case of Arvind Kejriwal at Kumaraswamy’s Swearing-in

New Delhi: Images of Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi hugging each other and waving flooded TV screens on Wednesday. Akhilesh Yadav, till recently a bitter foe of Mayawati, stood shoulder to shoulder with her all smiles.

In this, HD Kumaraswamy’s swearing in ceremony in Bengaluru on Wednesday was bigger than the sum of its parts. It pointed to a united anti-BJP opposition front that seems to be taking shape ahead of 2019.

But one man seemed to stay aloof – Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Kejriwal was somewhat of a political pariah until recently. That changed this week when he received a phone call from Karnataka’s chief minister designate HD Kumaraswamy. The Janata Dal (Secular) state chief invited the Delhi chief minister for his swearing-in.

This is the second time he flew down South. He had also attended the launch of his friend Kamal Haasan’s Makkal Needhi Maiam in Madurai in February.

His only other “friend” seems to be West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. During Wednesday’s swearing in, Kejriwal was aloof, posing for cameras for only a short while and then sliding back into the shadows.

When Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi came on stage to pose for the “money shot”, Kejriwal was absent.

And yet, the Aam Aadmi Party seems keen to shrug off the pariah tag. The AAP on Tuesday evening officially declared its support to for the joint opposition candidates in the upcoming Kairana Lok Sabha and Noorpur Vidhan Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Last year, they had done the same and supported opposition candidate Meira Kumar in the 2017 Presidential Election.

“The Aam Aadmi Party has decided to support the RLD candidate in the Kairana Lok Sabha bypoll and the SP candidate in the Noorpur Assembly bypoll,” AAP’s Rajya Sabha MP and UP unit chief Sanjay Singh said.