Arvind Kejriwal: From anti-corruption crusader to scam accused

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, March 21

Arvind Kejriwal, 55, rose to prominence after the Anna Hazare led anti-corruption movement in 2011 and landed in the Delhi CMO as the seventh Chief Minister.

He has been Chief Minister since February 2015 and had earlier served from December 2013 to February 2014, stepping down after 49 days of assuming power saying he was doing so due to his government’s inability to pass the Lokpal Bill.

In 2012, Kejriwal launched the Aam Aadmi Party, which won in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election with Kejriwal emerging a giant killer who defeated then three-time sitting Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit in her New Delhi seat by over 22,000 votes.

The AAP won 28 of Delhi’s 70 seats just four behind the BJP.

Following the election, Kejriwal took office as the Chief Minister of Delhi on December 28, 2013, for the first time with the Congress offering support to his government, a move widely seen as political hara-kiri by the party in hindsight as AAP expanded in Delhi at Congress Party’s cost.

Following his dramatic resignation from the post, Aam Aadmi Party swept Delhi polls winning 67 out of 70 Assembly seats in 2015. 

Before he took the political plunge, Kejriwal was a right to information advocate.

In 2006, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in recognition of his involvement in the grassroots-level movement, Parivartan, using right to information legislation in a campaign against corruption. 

Professionally, Kejriwal worked in the Indian Revenue Service as a Joint Commissioner of Income Tax in New Delhi. He is a graduate in Mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur.

He led the AAP to a phenomenal win in Delhi in 2015 and Punjab in 2022.

On both occasions he dented the rival Congress—the Sheila Dikshit-led dispensation in Delhi and Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu-led organisation in Punjab.

In the 2022 AAP wave of Punjab, stalwarts like late Parkash Singh Badal, former Punjab CM Parkash Singh Badal, Congress CM nominee Charanjit Channi lost.

Until the recent INDIA alliance bonhomie between Kejriwal and the Congress, the latter would slam Kejriwal as a “B team of BJP” on grounds that he contested in states to divide the Opposition vote that aided BJP victories as in Gujarat, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and other states.