Who is he?

Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, engineer turned civil servant, joined the Indian Revenue Service in 1992.  Disaffected by corruption in the civil service, he resigned in 2006 to become a social activist and anti-corruption crusader.

Kejriwal co-founded Parivartan, a citizens’ movement which works to ensure just and transparent governance. He first gained the spotlight after he successfully campaigned for the Right to Information (RTI) Act (passed in 2005) and today spearheads RTI awareness across India.  In 2011 he co-founded the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement to demand the enactment of a Jan Lokpal bill, a bill that would introduce an independent body to investigate corruption cases.

Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, founder of the anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party in India. Source: Wikimedia, used under a creative commons license.

Why is he in the news?

On October 2 Kejriwal founded the informally titled “Anti-Corruption Party” and has since published a series of exposés on high-level corruption in India.

• In early October he exposed a deal that entailed interest-free loans to Robert Vadra (son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi) in exchange for political favors.
• On October 12 Kejriwal and other activists demanded the arrest of Union Minister Salman Khurshid over financial irregularities in the functioning of an NGO run by his wife.
• During October 18-19 Kejriwal accused BJP President Nitin Gadkari of robbing farmers of land and water while protecting businesses in which he had vested interests.
• On November 9, Kejriwal claimed to have the names of industrialists and politicians who had evaded $1.09 billion in taxes by depositing the sums in HSBC bank accounts in Geneva.

What can we expect from him?

It is to be expected that Kejriwal will continue the trend of publicly exposing high-level corruption and graft with regards to India’s business and political leaders.  On November 26–Constitution Day in India–the informal Anti-Corruption Party was formally announced and registered as the Aam Aadmi Party.

The party is expected to deploy a country-wide outreach program to educate people on the ground.  The first big test for the party will be in the assembly polls in Delhi in October 2013, laying the foundations for nationwide elections in 2014.

Some question whether tensions still exist between Anna Hazare and Kejriwal (Kejriwal was Hazare’s protégé before breaking off).  The two maintain they have a good understanding and tensions only extend between their respective supporters.  They recognize that while their approaches may vary, they are both in the same anti-corruption fight.