Delhi Assembly Election 2020, Arvind Kejriwal Profile: Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convenor and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal won a third consecutive term as a legislator from the high-profile New Delhi Assembly constituency on Tuesday. Kejriwal won the seat by a margin of 21,697 votes.
He defeated BJP candidate Sunil Yadav who received 25,061 votes and Congress candidate Romesh Sabharwal who received just 3,220 votes.
File photo of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. PTI
A former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, he founded the NGO Parivartan in December 1999. In 2006, Kejriwal was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for his use of the Right to Information Act to combat corruption.
With the award money, he and his close confidant Manish Sisodia founded the Public Cause Research Foundation, which worked towards greater accountability in governance.
The IIT-Kharagpur graduate rose to national prominence during the 2011 anti-corruption movement led by social activist Anna Hazare. The movement specifically strived for the passing of the Jan Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill in the Parliament.
The bureaucrat -turned-anti-corruption crusader founded the Aam Aadmi Party in November 2012 after splitting from the Hazare-led movement.
In the very first election next year, he defeated then-chief minister Sheila Dikshit of the Congress by a margin of over 25,000 votes. After resigning as the chief minister after a mere 49 days in 2014, due to his party’s inability to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Assembly, his party made a spectacular comeback in the 2015 Assembly elections.
In the 2015 polls, the AAP won a whopping 67 out of the 70 seats in the Assembly. Kejriwal won his seat by over 31,000 votes, defeating Nupur Sharma of the BJP.
In his second term as chief minister, Kejriwal was involved in a long-standing feud with the Delhi LG over jurisdiction of powers in the Union Territory. In July 2018, his government got a much-needed boost, when the Supreme Court ruled that the LG is bound by the advice given by the council of ministers except in a few matters.
Moreover, he has also been in an uneasy relationship with the BJP-led Centre over the issue of granting full statehood to Delhi and the alleged interference of the Centre into Delhi’s matters. However, Kejriwal and his government has also been lauded for his pioneering work in school education and public healthcare in Delhi.
The education budget in the Union Territory has risen from Rs 6,600 crore to Rs 15,600 crore, while 20,000 new classrooms have been added in the last five years. Interestingly, many of the government schools now rank among the best in the country.
Mohalla Clinics, which are primary health centres in Delhi, have been lauded for their cheap and affordable healthcare facilities. For his visionary leadership, Kejriwal has been recognised as one of the 50 top visionary global leaders by Fortune magazine.