Arvind Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian politician born on August 16, 1968, founder of the political party Aam Aadmi Party and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Prize in 2006 for his action against corruption. He has been Chief Minister of Delhi since February 14, 2015.

Childhood and training

Arvind Kejriwal was born August 16, 1968 at Siwani, a village in Bhiwani district in the Haryana. He is the eldest of three children in a wealthy family. His father, Gobind Ram Kejriwal, is an electrical engineer, and his mother Gita Kejriwal, a housewife who had excellent schooling, is exceptional because the girls in her village were generally uneducated. His paternal grandfather Mangal Chand Bansal is a businessman, founder of many companies and a wealthy landowner.

Driven by his mother, the academic results of young Arvind Kejriwal are brilliant, he is studious and finishes regularly first of his class. After hesitating with a career as a doctor, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur. Unlike most of his classmates, he chose to remain in India for all its studies.

Professional career

After graduating, Kejriwal joined Tata Steel in 1989, a Tata group steel company. He resigned in 1991 and joined Mother Teresa at the Nirmal Hriday Hospital in Calcutta. He stays there for a month, then participates in various social works while waiting for the results of the administrative competitions he has held.

In August 1992, he joined the Indian Revenue Service, where he discovered the extent of widespread corruption when his superior explained to him that "enough money must be put aside during the first years to be able to honest the rest of his career".

Anti-corruption activism

In 2000, Kejriwal founded Parivartan (change), an organization that aims to help the population fight against corruption and lack of transparency of Indian institutions. He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award from the nascent leader in 2006 for his action.

He participated in the Indian anti-corruption movement in 2011 by Anna Hazare.

Aam Aadmi Party

In 2012, Kejriwal broke with Anna Hazare who did not want the movement to enter politics and founds the "Aam Aadmi Party".

AAP finished second elections in Delhi in December 2013 and Kejriwal became chief minister of a coalition government. He resigned 49 days later after failing to pass an anti-corruption law.

Kejriwal is named among the 100 most influential people by Time in 2014.

He is again a candidate for the position of Chief Minister of Delhi in the elections of the February 7, 2015 against his former comrade of the anti-corruption movement Kiran Bedi, candidate for the Bharatiya Janata Party. Aam Aadmi won 67 of the 70 seats, which allows Kejriwal to return to his post one year after his resignation. He is sworn on February 14, 2015. This is the first electoral defeat of the BJP since the accession of Narendra Modi for the post of Prime Minister of India.