Friday, April 18, 2014

Arvind Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal (born 16 August 1968) is an Indian politician and former civil servant who served as the 7th Chief Minister of Delhifrom 28 December 2013 to 14 February 2014. He is the leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Kejriwal is a 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. He is known for his efforts to enact and implement the Right to Information Act (RTI) at the grassroots level and his role in drafting a proposed Jan Lokpal Bill.
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 organization (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 government's inability to pass his proposed anti-corruption legislation due to a lack of support from other political parties.[1][2]

Early life

Kejriwal was born in a middle class family in SiwaniBhiwani districtHaryana on 16 August 1968, the first of the three children of Gobind Ram Kejriwal and Gita Devii. 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 SonepatGhaziabad and Hisar. He was educated at Campus School in Hisar[3] and at a Christian missionary school at Sonipat.[4]
Kejriwal graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, majoring in mechanical engineering. He joined Tata Steel in 1989 and was posted in Jamshedpur. Kejriwal resigned in 1992, having taken leave of absence in order to study for the Civil Services Examination.[3] Kejriwal spent some time in Kolkata, at the Ramakrishna Mission inNorth-East India and at Nehru Yuva Kendra.[5]

Early career

Kejriwal joined the IRS in 1995 after qualifying through the Civil Services Examination.[6] In 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 2003 and worked for 18 months before taking unpaid leave for 18 months.[7] In February 2006, he resigned from his position as a Joint Commissioner of Income Tax in New Delhi.[6] 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 Team Anna, a strand of the Indian anti-corruption movement. The dispute ran for several year until, in 2011, it was resolved when he paid his way out of the Service with the help of loans from friends.[7]

Activism

Parivartan

Kejriwal believes in the dictum that "Change begins with small things".[8] In December 1999, while still in service with the Income Tax Department, he helped found a movement named Parivartan (which means "change"), focused on assisting citizens in navigating income tax, electricity and food ration matters in parts of Delhi. The Parivartan organisation exposed a fake ration card scam in 2008[9][10] but, according to a founder member, did not have a great impact generally and was largely crumbling by 2012.[11] It was for his involvement with Parivartan that Kejriwal had been given the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006. The award citation noted Parivartan and that that "the board of trustees recognizes [Kejriwal's] activating India's right-to-information movement at the grassroots, empowering New Delhi's poorest citizens to fight corruption by holding government accountable to the people."[9]

Right to Information

Together with Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri, Kejriwal established the Public Cause Research Foundation in December 2006, donating the prize money he had received from the Ramon Magsaysay Award as a seed fund.[12] This new body paid the employees of Parivartan.[11] Kejriwal has used the Right to Information 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.[5]

Jan Lokpal Bill

Kejriwal was the civil society representative member of the committee constituted by the Government of India to draft a Jan Lokpal bill, following a campaign for introduction of such legislation that featured Anna Hazare. He had been arrested along with Hazare on defying Police directive to give a written undertaking that they will not go to JP Park. He attacked the government on this and said there was a need for a debate over police power to detain and release people at will.[13][14]

Political career

Kejriwal established the AAP in November 2012 as he believed that electoral politics was the next logical step in the fight against corruption.[15] This caused a rift between him and Hazare.[16] The party name reflects the phrase Aam Aadmi, or "common man", whose interests Kejriwal proposed to represent.[17] He became the fifth most mentioned Indian politician on social media channels in the run-up to the Delhi legislative assembly election of 2013.[18]

Chief Minister of Delhi

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.[19] Kejriwal defeated incumbent Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit of the Indian National Congress in her constituency of New Delhi[20] by a margin of 25,864 votes.[21]
AAP formed a minority government in the hung assembly, (claiming support for the action gauged from opinion polls) with outside support from the eight Indian National CongressMLAs, one Janta Dal MLA and one independent MLA.[22][23] 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.[24][25] He was in charge of Delhi's Home Ministry, Power, Planning, Finance, Vigilance ministries.[citation needed]

Resignation

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.[26] 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.[27]

2014 national elections

Kejriwal said in January, prior to his resignation as chief minister, that he would not contest a seat in the 2014 Loksabha elections.[28] Later in that month, party members persuaded him to change his mind, [29] and on 25 March, he agreed to contest against the BJP prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi [30] from Varanasi.[31]

Personal life

Kejriwal is married to 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 practicing Vipassana for many years.[3] Kejriwal is known to be averse to ceremony and does not celebrate his birthday. He hasdiabetes.[32]

Awards

Publications

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