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Who is Arvind Kejriwal
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is about to complete his first five-year term in the office soon, as the NCT of Delhi goes for polls on February 8th. The Aam Aadmi Party won 67 out of the 70 seats in 2015 Assembly elections. In the past five years, his government has majorly worked on the education and healthcare sector. In a bid to make the daily commute cheaper, he tried getting metro rides for women free, but that failed. Instead, the Delhi government made DTC bus travel for women free. It will be interesting to see if Arvind Kejriwal and his party are able to repeat the performance of 2015.
According to IANS-CVoter survey, Kejriwal emerged as the choice of the majority for the Delhi Chief Minister's post in the February 8 Assembly elections. Kejriwal got 67.6 per cent of the votes in the IANS-CVoter Delhi poll tracker. The other option in the list was Union Minister and BJP MP Harsh Vardhan, who was the choice of 11.9 per cent people.
Kejriwal is an IITian, and former IRS officer. Arvind Kejriwal's entry into politics was much-talked-about, even as he has now been well-grounded in this field for over five years. The founder and national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Kejriwal came into the limelight after receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006. He had been recognised for empowering citizens to fight corruption and encouraging the Right to Information (RTI) movement.
In 2011, Kejriwal, along with activist Anna Hazare and others formed the group India Against Corruption (IAC), which protested against the government's delay in enacting the Jan Lokpal Bill (citizen's ombudsman Bill). Although the movement failed, Kejriwal's struggle won him admirers across the globe. He went on to venture into active politics by forming the AAP, which won the Delhi Assembly election for the first time in 2013. Kejriwal became the CM, but the government fell in under 50 days. Following over a year of President’s rule in the capital, the next Assembly polls in 2015 saw Kejriwal’s AAP returning to power with a landslide win in Delhi — 67 of the 70 seats. He again became the CM and has been in that position since.
In 2014, Kejriwal unsuccessfully contested against the BJP’s then prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, from Varanasi in UP. Kejriwal and his government have been at constant loggerheads with the Narendra Modi government and the Delhi Lieutenant-Governor, over issues revolving around public appointments, the responsibility of the UT and the Centre, etc.
For the coming Lok Sabha elections, Arvind Kejriwal is seen as an important leader for galvanising Opposition forces against the BJP and its allies. Also, from the 2015 Delhi election instance, Kejriwal has proved that he is capable of throwing surprises, especially when he is underestimated.