- published: 24 Dec 2013
- views: 39526
The Chief Minister of Delhi (Hindi: दिल्ली के मुख्यमंत्री, Dillī kē Mukhyamaṃtrī)) is the chief of government, head of the Council of Ministers and the leader of the majority party in Delhi assembly. The Chief Minister leads the executive branch of the Government of Delhi.
The leader of party with the largest representation of seats in the unicameral Legislative Assembly of Delhi usually takes on the role. Delhi and Pondicherry are the only union territories of India, which have given partial statehood according to Seventh Schedule of the Constitution in which Delhi is defined as National Capital Territory of India or NCT-Delhi. Due to this special right of partial statehood, unlike other union territories which are governed by special administrators appointed by the President of India, governments of Delhi and Pondicherry both are headed by their respective chief ministers and Lieutenant Governors, appointed by the president act as the head of state. The incumbent chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, is India’s longest serving woman chief minister.
Delhi (/ˈdɛli/; locally pronounced Dillee or Dehli), officially the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT), is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest metropolis by population in India. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16.7 million inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census. The region has been given special status of National Capital Region under The Constitution (69th Amendment) Act, 1991. There are nearly 22.2 million residents in the greater National Capital Region urban area (which also includes the cities Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon,Sonepat and Faridabad along with other smaller nearby towns).
Delhi is known to have been continuously inhabited since at least the 6th century BCE, though human habitation is believed to have existed since the second millennium BCE. Delhi is also widely believed to have been the site of Indraprastha, the legendary capital of the Pandavas during the times of the Mahabharata. Delhi re-emerged as a major political, cultural and commercial city along the trade routes between northwest India and the Gangetic plain after the rise of the Delhi sultanates. It is the site of many ancient and medieval monuments, archaeological sites and remains.
A Chief Minister is the elected head of government of a sub-national (e.g. constituent federal) state, provinces of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, notably a state (and sometimes a union territory) of India, a territory of Australia or a British Overseas Territory that has attained self-government. It is also used as the English version of the title given to the heads of governments of the Malay states without a monarchy.
The title is also used in the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man (since 1986), in Guernsey (since 2004), and in Jersey (since 2005).
In Malaysia, it is used to refer to the heads of government, called in their Malay language term Ketua Menteri (literally Chief Minister), of the Malaysian states without a sultan, i.e., Malacca, Penang, Sabah and Sarawak, while the Malay language term Menteri Besar (literally Great Minister) is used in other states with a monarch.
By analogy the term is often applied to various other high ministerial offices, e.g. in a princely state before or during the British raj.