Two days after AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal effected a seismic change in Delhi politics by announcing that he would resign as chief minister, he has passed the baton – albeit temporarily – to his party colleague Atishi, who is set to become the youngest person to take up the top job in the Delhi government.
The 43-year-old, who studied at St Stephen’s College and Oxford University and was a Rhodes Scholar, was one of the founding members of the Aam Aadmi Party and remained far away from the spotlight for many years before making her way to its edges and then to its very centre.
Education
Born to Delhi University professors Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi in June 1981, Atishi’s parents, who were believers in the communist ideology, gave her an unusual surname – Marlena, a portmanteau of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.
Ms Atishi studied at Springdales School in New Delhi’s Pusa Road before going on to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in history from the prestigious St Stephen’s University, where she topped her batch. After graduating in 2001, she completed her Master’s degree in the subject on a Chevening scholarship in 2003. Two years later, she studied at the Magdalen College in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.
Political Entry
Ms Atishi was a founding member of the AAP and was also on the 2013 manifesto drafting committee. After the party formed a government in Delhi, she worked as an adviser on education-related policies and, according to news agency PTI, also spent several years in a Madhya Pradesh village, focusing on organic farming and progressive education. This experience played a crucial role in strengthening her dedication to political change, a party member told the agency.
Contesting Elections
The party gave Ms Atishi a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha polls from New Delhi and, some time after she was declared the candidate, she decided to stop using her surname, Marlena. The party said the move was because the BJP, which had won all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in 2014, was trying to use her surname to polarise voters suggesting that she was a Christian or a foreigner.
The AAP leader lost to the BJP’s Gautam Gambhir by a margin of over 4.5 lakh votes in 2019, coming third behind the Congress candidate, Arvinder Singh Lovely.
Achievements
The next year, Ms Atishi contested the Assembly elections in Delhi from Kalkaji and won by a margin of over 11,000 votes.
In 2015, she was appointed an advisor to education minister Manish Sisodia and played a key role in the conceptualisation and implementation of the Happiness Curriculum, which was designed to increase the wellness of children and help “develop a holistic outlook and perspective on life”.
Education has been one of the main talking points for the AAP and some of the other initiatives she is credited with helping bring to fruition include improving the infrastructure in Delhi government schools, making it harder for schools to hike fees arbitrarily and forming school management committees under the Right to Education Act.
After becoming an AAP spokesperson in 2018, Ms Atishi was slowly becoming known for her articulation of the Delhi government’s policies and her strong defence against criticisms directed at it, but she was really thrust into the spotlight when deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia was arrested in the Delhi liquor policy last year. She was inducted into the cabinet and then given more responsibility after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was taken into custody in the same case in March, becoming the minister with the highest number of portfolios in the Delhi government, including important ones like education, finance and the public works department.
Her standing in the party was clear but it was cemented when Mr Kejriwal named her to hoist the flag on his behalf on Independence Day, something that was not eventually allowed by the Lieutenant Governor.
Two days after Mr Kejriwal’s release on bail on Friday, he said he would resign and Atishi was chosen unanimously as the replacement after her name was proposed by the AAP chief.
After she is sworn in, Ms Atishi will be the youngest chief minister of Delhi and only its third woman chief minister, after Sheila Dikshit and Sushma Swaraj.
Controversies
Ahead of the 2019 elections, a video started doing the rounds in which Atishi was purportedly asking voters to cast their ballots even for goons in the opposition to help defeat the BJP. This led to attacks from other parties, who said this showed the real face of the AAP.
On Tuesday, AAP MP Swati Maliwal claimed Atishi’s parents had tried to save terrorist Afzal Guru from being hanged.
“Today is a very sad day for Delhi. Today, a woman whose family fought a long battle to save terrorist Afzal Guru from being hanged is being made the Chief Minister of Delhi. His parents wrote mercy petitions to the Honorable President to save terrorist Afzal Guru,” Ms Maliwal said in a social media post.
The AAP hit back and asked Ms Maliwal to resign, saying she was sent to the Rajya Sabha by the party but reads out the BJP’s script.
“Swati Maliwal takes a Rajya Sabha ticket from the AAP but takes the script to react from the BJP. If she has even a little shame, she should resign as a Rajya Sabha MP and choose the path to Rajya Sabha on a BJP ticket,” said senior party leader Dilip Pandey.
Challenges
One of the main reasons behind Mr Kejriwal’s resignation was the conditions put in place by the Supreme Court while granting him bail. The conditions include that he cannot visit the chief minister’s office or the Delhi secretariat or sign files without a nod from the Delhi Lieutenant Governor.
While it is clear that Ms Atishi is going to be a stand-in chief minister until the next elections, she still has to deliver on the AAP’s core promises. And though only a few months are left, the performance of the government under her could also sway voters.
“Arvind Kejriwal believed in me… AAP believed in me. That is why I have been given this responsibility. While I am happy in this trust, I am also sad Arvind Kejriwal had to resign. Delhi has only one Chief Minister… and that is Mr Kejriwal,” Ms Atishi said on Tuesday.
“Today, to all the people of Delhi, this is an appeal to make your son, your brother, Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi again because he is an honest man. Citizens, AAP MLAs, and I will work towards only one objective – making Arvind Kejriwal chief minister once again,” she added.
