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After a spectacular debut by his party, AAP, in the recent Assembly elections, political greenhorn Arvind Kejriwal is set to become Delhi’s youngest Chief Minister after defeating three-time incumbent Sheila Dikshit.
Described as the ‘key lieutenant’ of veteran social activist Anna Hazare, 45-year-old Arvind Kejriwal, a mechanical engineer from IIT-Kharagpur, joined Tata Steel in 1989. He quit in 1992 after making it to the Indian Revenue Service. In early 2000, he took long leave, set up an NGO, Parivartan, and plunged into social activism, taking up the cause of Right to Information, a campaign led by well-known social activists Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey and others associated with the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information.
In 2006, the Haryana-born Kejriwal resigned as Joint Commissioner, Income Tax. In the same year, he caught public eye after he bagged the Ramon Magsaysay award for Emergent Leadership for his work on RTI.
Said to have an astute and sharp political sense, Kejriwal became part of what is known as the ‘Anna agitation’ against corruption in 2012, demanding a Jan Lokpal. He was one among the key lieutenants of Team Anna, along with senior advocates Shanti Bhushan, Santosh Hegde and Prashant Bhushan, and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi.
However, three hunger strikes by Hazare, one by Baba Ramdev and various meetings of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee with the government, an inclusive Parliament session failed to meet all their demands. Finally in 2012, after the government egged on Team Anna to first get people’s mandate, Kejriwal and the Bhushans parted ways with Hazare, plunged into party politics and announced the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2012-end.
After forming AAP, Kejriwal declared that his focus would be on Delhi. In the meantime, AAP came out with various ‘exposes’ on alleged corruption involving the DLF-Robert Vadra land deal, UPA and BJP ‘favouring’ Reliance’s interests in the KG-D6 basin, on land acquisition by former BJP president Nitin Gadkari’s sugar mills, among others.
After winning 28 seats and 30 per cent vote share, AAP fell short of a majority in the 70-member House in the December 2013 elections, with the BJP emerging as the single largest party with 31 seats and declining to form a government. The Congress faced its worst rout, with only eight seats.
Ironically, jeered as the ‘Mango Man’ by some Congress leaders, Kejriwal’s AAP is finally forming the government in Delhi with Congress support.
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