Arvind Kejriwal Arrested: A bureaucrat-turned-politician has had a rocky career. (document)
New Delhi:
From leading the ‘India Against Corruption’ movement to becoming Delhi Chief Minister three times in a row, Arvind Kejriwal, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on Thursday, has had a checkered career from bureaucrat to activist to politician .
Kejriwal’s arrest comes as his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) formally forays into electoral politics by holding Lok Sabha polls in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat in partnership with its opposition India Bloc partner Congress. .
The arrest of the 55-year-old AAP national convener is likely to have a serious impact on the party’s poll numbers as he has been central to its plans and strategy for the Lok Sabha elections.
In his absence, the party faces uncertainty as many other senior leaders are either in jail or in political obscurity.
His trusted aides Sanjay Singh and Manish Sisodia are in jail in connection with the GST policy case, while another trusted aide Satyendar Jha Satyendar Jain was imprisoned in another money laundering case.
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Mr Kejriwal, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, first led the AAP to form a government in Delhi in 2013 with external support from the Congress. He faced off against former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in the New Delhi constituency and defeated her by a margin of 22,000 votes in the first polls.
But the Aam Aadmi Party Congress government lasted only 49 days, and Mr. Kejriwal resigned after failing to pass the Jan Lok Pal Bill in the Delhi Assembly.
Buoyed by the party’s victory in its first election in Delhi, Mr Kejriwal announced his decision to face the BJP’s Narendra Modi in the 2014 Varanasi Lok Sabha elections, only to face a Failed miserably.
The following year, Mr Kejriwal led the AAP to win 67 seats in the capital, limiting the Modi-wave BJP to just three seats and leaving Congress empty-handed.
On the eve of the 2015 parliamentary elections, he repeatedly apologized for his behavior during his 49-day term in 2013 and promised not to resign again.
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The AAP, which grew out of the anti-corruption movement in 2011, was founded the following year on Gandhi’s birth anniversary (October 2) by Mr Kejriwal and his closest associates in the national capital.
In just 12 years, Mr. Kejriwal single-handedly led the rise of AAP into India’s third-largest national political party after the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. Its footprints not only extend to Delhi and Punjab, but also extend to distant places. Gujarat and Goa.
Mr Kejriwal was challenged by politicians to get active in politics and get a taste of realpolitik during India Against Corruption, but he successfully made issues like health, education, water and power supply part of his political agenda. At the heart of governance, even critics slammed him for abandoning his commitment to Lokpal.
Mr Kejriwal rose to prominence as an activist in 2011 when huge corruption allegations hit the then Congress-led UPA regime, triggering widespread public outrage and he has maintained that momentum, criticizing politicians. Health and education conditions were slammed. nation.
In a political career that spans more than a decade, Mr Kejriwal has made a variety of moves, whether joining India’s opposition bloc, whose leaders he had earlier blasted over corruption, or taking The attitude of “soft Hindutva” is exemplified by his liberalism. The pilgrimage program and the recent incident of chanting of slogans “Jai Sri Ram” in the Delhi Assembly.
Read | Delhi minister detained during AAP protest against Arvind Kejriwal arrest
At one point, he had demanded that the pictures of Ganesha and Lakshmi be printed on currency notes to promote economic prosperity in the country.
The AAP’s quest for corruption-free governance and alternative politics has suffered a major blow with Mr Kejriwal jailed in a liquor scam case.
While defending Mr Sisodia, Mr Singh and Satyendar Jain, Mr Kejriwal had called corruption “treason” and claimed that AAP was following the path of Bhagat Singh path of.
Mr Kejriwal’s arrest in a corruption case is indeed a far cry from his earlier image as an AAP leader. In 2013, he went on a 14-day fast to pressure the then Sheila Dikshit government to take action over “inflated” water and electricity bills.
Mr Kejriwal has positioned himself as one of the country’s top politicians, having come a long way in a relatively short political career. He won power around 2014-15 as the slight, bespectacled and scarf-wearing leader of an emerging party. The nickname “The Silencer”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
