Contents

1. Introduction
2. Personal life
3. Career in IRS
4. Anti coruption activation
5. Public cause research
foundation
6. Jan Lokpal movement
7. Return of the anti
corruption branch
8. Political career
Establishment of AAP
9. Chief Minister of Delhi
(first term)
10. 2014 National Elections
11. Chief Minister of Delhi
(second term)
12. Legal Affairs
13. Awards and recognitions

Arvind Kejriwal

7th Chief Minister of Delhi[1]

Incumbent
Assumed office
14 February 2015
Deputy

Manish Sisodia

Preceded by President's Rule

In office
28 December 2013 14 February 2014
Preceded by Sheila Dikshit
Succeeded

President's Rule

by
Member of the Delhi Legislative
Assemblyfor New Delhi
Incumbent

Assumed office
8 December 2013
Preceded by Sheila Dikshit

Personal details
Born

16 August 1968 (age 47)

Siwani, Haryana, India

Nationality

Indian

Political
party

Aam Aadmi Party

Spouse(s)

Sunita Kejriwal

Children

Residence

Delhi

Alma mater IIT Kharagpur

Profession

Activist, Politician

Religion

Hinduism [2]

Awards

Ramon Magsaysay

Award

Arvind Kejriwal (born 16 August 1968) is an Indian

politician who is the Chief Minister of Delhi since
February 2015. He previously served as Chief Minister
from December 2013 to
February 2014,
stepping down after 49
days. He is the
national convener of
theAam Aadmi
Party (AAP). His party
won the 2015 Delhi
Assembly
elections with a
majority, obtaining 67
out of 70 assembly
seats.
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.
In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay
Award for Emergent Leadership recognising his
involvement in the grassroots
movement Parivartan using right-to-information legislat
ion 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 the
party won 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.

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. He
is diabetic.

Career in IRS
Kejriwal joined the IRS as an Officer of Income Tax in
1995 after qualifying through the Civil Services
Examination. 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. For the next 18
months, Kejriwal was on sanctioned unpaid leave. In
February 2006, he resigned from his position as a
Officer of Income Tax in New Delhi. 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. Kejriwal paid 927,787 as dues, but
stated that this should not be considered as an
admission of fault.

Anti-corruption activism
Parivartan and Kabir

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
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
In 2003 (and again in 2008), 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.
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). 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.
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. 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.

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.This new body paid the employees of
Parivartan. 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.

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

In 2011,
Kejriwal joined
several other
activists,
including Anna
Hazare and Kira
n 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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. By mid-2012, Kejriwal
had replaced Anna Hazare as the face of the remaining
protestors.

In 2015 during the second term of AAP government in

Delhi the Jan Lokpal Bill was passed by the assembly
awaiting presidents approval

Return of the Anti-corruption

Branch
In March 2016 Kejriwal announced to the Delhi
Assembly the return of the Anti-Corruption Branch
(ACB) a government branch that was taken away by the
previous government and was dedicated to fight
corruption in the administration.

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. 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. The establishment of
AAP caused a rift between Kejriwal and Hazare.
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.

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. Kejriwal
defeated incumbent Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit of
the Indian National Congress (INC), in her constituency
of New Delhi by a margin of 25,864 votes.
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. 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. He was in charge of Delhi's
home, power, planning, finance, services and vigilance
ministries.
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. Kejriwal blamed the Indian National Congress
and the Bharatiya Janata Party for stalling the anticorruption 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. In April 2014 he said that he had made a
mistake by resigning without publicly explaining the
rationale behind his decision.

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. Party members persuaded him to
change his mind, and on 25 March, he agreed to
contest against the BJP prime ministerial
candidate,Narendra Modi, from Varanasi. He lost the
contest by a margin of around 370,000 votes.

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. In those elections,
he was again elected from the New Delhi constituency,
defeating Nupur Sharma by 31,583 votes. He took oath
on 14 February 2015 as Delhi's chief minister for a
second time at Ramlila Maidan. Since then his party has
passed the Jan Lokpal Bill though with some
differences

Legal Affairs
On 2 March 2016, Delhi High Court asked Chief Minister
Arvind Kejriwal and suspended BJP MP Kirti Azad to file
their written statements in a civil defamation suit of Rs
5 crore filed by DDCA for their alleged remarks against
the cricket body regarding its functioning and
finances. As of March, 2016 Kejriwal has 6 active
defamation cases against him in addition to 3 still in
application phase. Kejriwal also in his own affidavit to
Election Directorate before the second term elections in
2015 declared that he has 10 criminal charges and 47
total charges against him

Awards and recognitions

2004: Ashoka Fellow, Civic Engagement

2005: Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award, IIT

Kanpur for his campaign for bringing transparency in
Governance

2006: Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent

Leadership

2006: CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in Public Service

2009: Distinguished Alumnus Award, IIT Kharagpur

for Eminent Leadership

2009: Awarded a grant and fellowship by

the Association for India's Development.

2010: Policy Change Agent of the Year, Economic

Times Awards along with Aruna Roy

2011: NDTV Indian of the Year along with Anna

Hazare

2013: CNN-IBN Indian of the Year 2013-Politics

2013: Foreign Policy magazine top 100 global

thinker, November 2013

2014: Kejriwal was featured in Time's 2014 Time

100 list of the most influential people in the world.

2015: 7th position in 100 most influential Indians

2015 by The Indian Express

2016: 8th position in 100 most influential Indians

2016 by The Indian Express

2016: Ranked 42nd position on the list and is the

sole leader from India. Among worlds 50 greatest
leaders by Fortune (magazine)