Arvind Kejriwal (born 16 August 1968) is an
Indian politician, social activist and former Indian
Revenue Service officer who is the seventh and current Chief
Minister of Delhi. This is his second term as the Chief Minister, after
his Party won the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections with a majority, winning 67
out of 70 assembly seats. He is the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal is a Mechanical Engineering graduate
of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, and worked for the
Indian Revenue Service (IRS) as a Joint
Commissioner in the Income
Tax Department.[3][4]
In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon
Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognising his
involvement in a grassroots movement Parivartan using right-to-information legislation in a campaign
against corruption. The same year, after resigning from the IRS, he donated his
Magsaysay award money as a corpus fund to found the Public
Cause Research Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
In 2012, he launched the Aam Aadmi Party, and
defeated Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election. Following the
election, he took office as the Chief Minister of Delhi on 28 December 2013. He
resigned 49 days later, on 14 February 2014, stating he did so because of his minority
government's inability to pass his proposed anti-corruption
legislation due to a lack of support from other political parties.[5][6]
On 14 February 2015, he sworn-in as the Chief
Minister for a second term after the victory in the assembly election.[7][8]
Contents
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7 Books
Early life
Kejriwal was born in a middle-class family in Siwani, Bhiwani district, Haryana on 16 August 1968, the
first of the three children of Gobind Ram Kejriwal and Gita Devi. His father
was an electrical engineer who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, and whose work led to
many changes in the family's residence. Kejriwal spent most of his childhood in
north Indian towns such as Sonepat, Ghaziabad and Hisar. He was educated at Campus
School in Hisar[9] and at a Christian
missionary school at Sonipat.[10]
Kejriwal's grandfather was pleased when he
considered training for a medical career but Kejriwal eventually opted to study
engineering because there were far more student places available. He graduated
from the Indian
Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, majoring in mechanical
engineering. He joined Tata Steel in 1989 and was posted inJamshedpur. Kejriwal resigned in 1992,
having taken leave of absence to study for the Civil
Services Examination.[9] He spent some time in Kolkata, where he met Mother Teresa, and volunteered with The Missionaries
of Charity and at the Ramakrishna
Mission in North-East India and at Nehru Yuva Kendra.[11]
Personal life
In 1995, Arvind Kejriwal married Sunita, his
batchmate from National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie and the National
Academy of Direct Taxes in Nagpur. The couple have two children. Kejriwal is vegetarian
and has been practising the Vipassana meditation technique for
many years.[9] He is diabetic.[12]
Early career
Kejriwal joined the IRS as an Assistant
Commissioner of Income Tax in 1995 after qualifying through the Civil Services
Examination.[13] In November 2000, he was
granted two years' paid leave to pursue higher education on condition that upon
resuming his work he would not resign from the Service for at least three
years. Failure to abide by that condition would require him to repay the salary
given during the leave period. He rejoined in November 2002. According to
Kejriwal, he was not given any posting for almost a year, and kept getting his
salary without doing any work; so, after 18 months, he applied for leave
without pay.[14] For the next 18 months,
Kejriwal was on sanctioned unpaid leave.[15] In February 2006, he
resigned from his position as a Joint Commissioner of Income Tax in New Delhi.[13] The Government of
India claimed that Kejriwal had violated his
original agreement by not working for three years. Kejriwal said that his 18
months of work and 18 months of unpaid absence amounted to the stipulated
three-year period during which he could not resign and that this was an attempt
to malign him due to his involvement with the Indian anti-corruption movement.
The dispute ran for several years until, in 2011, it was resolved when he paid
his way out of the Service with the help of loans from friends.[15] Kejriwal paid ₹ 927,787 as dues, but stated
that this should not be considered as an admission of fault.[14]
Anti-corruption activism
Parivartan and Kabir
As an IRS officer, Kejriwal was troubled by
the rampant corruption in the Income Tax department. In December 1999, while
still in service with the Income Tax Department, Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia and others found a movement
named Parivartan (which means
"change"), in the Sundar Nagari area of Delhi. A month later, in
January 2000, Kejriwal took a sabbatical from work to focus on Parivartan.[16][17]
Parivartan addressed citizens' grievances
related to Public
Distribution System (PDS), public works, social welfare schemes,
income tax and electricity. It was not a registeredNGO - it ran on individual
donations, and was characterised as a jan andolan ("people's
movement") by its members.[18] Later, in 2005, Kejriwal
and Manish Sisodia launched Kabir, a registered NGO named after the medieval
philosopher Kabir. Like
Parivartan, Kabir was also focused on RTI and participatory governance.
However, unlike Parivartan, it accepted institutional donations. According to
Kejriwal, Kabir was mainly run by Sisodia.[19]
In 2000, Parivartan filed a public
interest litigation (PIL) demanding transparency in public
dealings of the Income Tax department, and also organised a satyagraha outside the Chief
Commissioner's office.[20] Kejriwal and other
activists also stationed themselves outside the electricity department, asking
visitors not to pay bribes and offered to help them in getting work done for
free.[21]
In 2001, the Delhi government enacted a
state-level Right To Information (RTI) Act, which allowed the citizens to
access government records for a small fee. Parivartan used RTI to help people
get their work done in government departments without paying a bribe. In 2002,
the group obtained official reports on 68 public works projects in the area,
and performed a community-led audit to expose misappropriations worth ₹ 7 million in 64 of the
projects.[17] On 14 December 2002,
Parivartan organised a jan sunvai (public hearing), in which
the citizens held public officials and leaders accountable for the lack of
development in their locality.[22]
In 2003 (and again in 2008[23]), Parivartan exposed a PDS scam, in which ration shop dealers were siphoning off
subsidised foodgrains in collusion with civic officials. In 2004, Parivartan
used RTI applications to access communication between government agencies and
the World Bank,
regarding a project for privatisation of water supply. Kejriwal and other
activists questioned the huge expenditure on the project, and argued that it
would hike water tariffs ten-fold, thus effectively cutting off the water supply
to the city's poor. The project was stalled as a result of Parivartan's
activism. Another campaign by Parivartan led to a court order that required
private schools, which had received public land at discounted prices, to admit
more than 700 poor kids without fee.[20][21]
Along with other social activists like Anna Hazare, Aruna Roy and Shekhar Singh, Kejriwal came to be
recognised as an important contributor to the campaign for a national-levelRight
to Information Act (enacted in 2005).[20] He resigned from his job in
February 2006, and later that year, he was given the Ramon Magsaysay Award for
Emergent Leadership, for his involvement with Parivartan. The award recognised
him for activating the RTI movement at the grassroots, and empowering New
Delhi's poor citizens to fight corruption.[21]
By 2012, Parivartan was largely inactive.
Sundar Nagri, where the movement was concentrated, suffered from irregular
water supply, unreliable PDS system and poorly done public works.[18] Calling it "ephemeral
and delusionary in nature", Kejriwal noted that Parivartan's success was
limited, and the changes brought by it did not last long.[24]
Public Cause Research Foundation
In December 2006, Kejriwal established the
Public Cause Research Foundation in December 2006, together with Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri. He
donated his Ramon Magsaysay Award prize money as a seed fund. Besides the three founders, Prashant Bhushan and Kiran Bedi served as the Foundation's
trustees.[25] This new body paid the
employees of Parivartan.[18] Kejriwal used the RTI Act
in corruption cases in many government departments including the Income Tax
Department, the Municipal
Corporation of Delhi, the Public
Distribution System and the Delhi Electricity Board.[11]
Jan Lokpal movement
In 2010, Kejriwal protested against
corruption in the Commonwealth Games. He argued that the Central Vigilance
Commission (CVC) did not have any powers to take any action against the guilty,
while CBI was incapable of launching an unbiased investigation against the
ministers who controlled it. He advocated appointment of public ombudsman - Lokpal at the Centre and
Lokayuktas in states.[26]
In 2011, Kejriwal joined several other
activists, including Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi, to form the India
Against Corruption (IAC) group. The IAC demanded enactment of
the Jan Lokpal Bill,
which would result in a strong ombudsman. The campaign evolved into the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement. In response to the
campaign, the government's advisory body - the National
Advisory Council - drafted a Lokpal Bill. However, the NAC's Bill
was criticised by Kejriwal and other activists on the grounds that it did not
have enough powers to take action against the prime minister, other corrupt
officeholders and the judiciary. The activists also criticised the procedure
for selection of Lokpal, the transparency clauses and the proposal to disallow
the Lokpal from taking cognisance of public grievances.[27]
Amid continuing protests, the Government
constituted a committee to Draft a Jan Lokpal Bill. Kejriwal was one of the civil society representative members of
this committee. However, he alleged that the IAC activists had an unequal
position in the committee, and the government appointees kept ignoring their
recommendations. The Government argued that the activists could not be allowed
to blackmail the elected representatives through protests. Kejriwal retorted
that democratically elected representatives could not be allowed to function
like dictators, and asked for a public debate on the contentious issues.[28]
The IAC activists intensified their protests,
and Anna Hazare organised a hunger strike. Kejriwal and other
activists were arrested for defying a police directive to give a written
undertaking that they will not go to JP Park. Kejriwal attacked the government
on this and said there was a need for a debate over police power to detain and
release people at will.[29][30] In August 2011, a
settlement was reached between the Government and the activists.[31]
Besides the government, the Jan Lokpal
movement was also criticised by some citizens as 'undemocratic' on the grounds
that the ombudsman had powers over elected representatives. Arundhati Roy claimed that the movement
was not a people's movement; instead, it was funded by foreigners to influence
policy making in India. She pointed out that the Ford Foundation had funded the
Emergent Leadership category of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, and also donated
$397,000 to Kejriwal's NGO Kabir.[32] Both Kejriwal and Ford
Foundation termed the allegations as baseless, stating that the donations were
made to support the RTI campaigns. Besides, several other Indian organisations
had also received grants from the Ford Foundation.[33][34] Kejriwal also denied the
allegations that the movement was a plot against the ruling Congress by the RSS,
or that it was an upper-caste conspiracy against the Dalits.[19]
By January 2012, the Government had
backtracked on its promise to implement a strong Jan Lokpal, resulting in
another series of protests from Kejriwal and his fellow activists. These
protests attracted lower participation compared to the 2011 protests.[35] By mid-2012, Kejriwal had
replaced Anna Hazare as the face of the remaining protestors.[36]
Political career
Establishment of AAP
Kejriwal during the launch
of AAP in Bangalore, in July 2013
One of the major criticisms directed at the
Jan Lokpal activists was that they had no right to dictate terms to the elected
representatives. As a result, Kejriwal and other activists decided to enter
politics and contest elections.[37] In November 2012, they
formally launched the Aam Aadmi Party; Kejriwal was elected as the party's
National Convener. The party name reflects the phrase Aam Aadmi, or "common man",
whose interests Kejriwal proposed to represent.[38] The establishment of AAP
caused a rift between Kejriwal and Hazare.[39]
AAP decided to contest the Delhi Legislative Assembly election, 2013, with Kejriwal
contesting against the incumbent Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit. Kejriwal became the fifth
most-mentioned Indian politician on social media channels in the run-up to the
elections.[40]
Chief Minister of Delhi (first term)
In the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly
elections for all 70 seats, the Bhartiya Janta Party won 31 seats, followed by
Aam Aadmi Party with 28 seats.[41] Kejriwal defeated incumbent
Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit of the Indian
National Congress (INC), in her constituency of New Delhi[42] by a margin of 25,864
votes.[43]
AAP formed a minority government in the hung assembly, (claiming support for the
action gauged from opinion polls) with outside support from the eight INC MLAs,
one Janata Dal MLA and one independent MLA.[44][45] Kejriwal was sworn in as
the second-youngest chief minister of Delhi on 28 December 2013, after Chaudhary
Brahm Prakash who became chief minister at the age of 34.[46][47] He was in charge of Delhi's
Home Ministry, Power, Planning, Finance, Vigilance ministries.[48]
On 14 February 2014 he resigned as Chief
Minister after failing to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi Assembly. He
recommended the dissolution of the Assembly.[49] Kejriwal blamed the Indian
National Congress and the Bharatiya
Janata Party for stalling the anti-corruption legislation
and linked it with the government's decision to register a First
Information Report (FIR) against industrialist Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing
director of Reliance Industries.[50] In April 2014 he said that
he had made a mistake by resigning without listening to the people to
understand what their expectations were of him. He attributed this to him being
a novice in politics and promised not to resign in future in any circumstances.[51]
2014 National Elections
Kejriwal campaigning in
Maharashtra, during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections
Kejriwal said in January, prior to his
resignation as chief minister, that he would not contest a seat in the 2014
Lok Sabha elections.[52]Party members persuaded him to change his
mind,[53] and on 25 March, he agreed
to contest against the BJP prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, from Varanasi.[54][55] He lost the contest.[56]
Chief Minister of Delhi (second term)
Kejriwal led AAP to win 67 of the 70
constituencies in the 2015 Delhi Assembly elections, leaving the BJP with three
seats and the INC with none.[57] In those elections, he was
again elected from the New Delhi constituency, defeating Nupur Sharma by 31,583 votes.[58] He took oath on 14 February
2015 as Delhi's chief minister for a second time at Ramlila Maidan.[59]
Awards and recognitions
·
2005: Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award, IIT Kanpur for his campaign for
bringing transparency in Governance[60]
·
2014:
Kejriwal was featured in Time's 2014 Time 100 list of the most
influential people in the world.[69]
Books
Authored
by Arvind Kejriwal
Biographies
of Arvind Kejriwal
·
Arvind Mohan Dwivedi; Rajneesh Roshan (2014). Magnetic Personality : Arvind Kejriwal. Diamond. ISBN 978-93-5165-110-9.
·
Soma Banerjee; Gautam Chikermane (2014). The Disrupter. Rupa Publications. ISBN 978-81-291-3384-7.
·
Rashmi Bansal (2013). Into that heaven of freedom: Arvind Kejriwal. Westland. ISBN 978-93-83260-49-2. (extracted from I Have a Dream)
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