Biography of Arvind Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal

 Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian politician and a former bureaucrat who is the current and 7th Chief Minister of Delhi since February 2015. He was also the Chief Minister of Delhi from December 2013 to February 2014, stepping down after 49 days of assuming power. 

Born: 16 August 1968 (age 52 years), Siwani

Spouse: Sunita Kejriwal (m. 1994)

Party: Aam Aadmi Party

Education: Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (1985–1989), Campus School, Dayanand College

Children: Harshita Kejriwal, Pulkit Kejriwal

Awards: NDTV Indian of the Year, CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in Politics, Satyendra K. Dubey Memorial Award, CNN-IBN Indian of the Year in Public Service(2006), Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership(2006), NDTV Indian Of The Year(2011), Policy Change Agent Of The Year (2010)

Before joining politics, Kejriwal had worked in the Indian Revenue Service as a Joint Commissioner of Income Tax in New Delhi. Kejriwal is a graduate in Mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. In 2012, he launched the Aam Aadmi Party, which won in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election. Following the election, he took office as the Chief Minister of Delhi on 28 December 2013. He resigned 49 days later, on 14 February 2014, stating he did so because of his minority government's inability to pass his proposed anti-corruption legislation due to a lack of support from other political parties. On 14 February 2015, he was sworn in as Chief Minister for a second term after his party's victory in the Delhi Legislative Assembly election.

Kejriwal was born in an upper middle-class educated Agrawal  family in Siwani, Bhiwani district, Haryana on 16 August 1968, the first of the three children of Gobind Ram Kejriwal and Gita Devi. His father was an electrical engineer who graduated from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. Kejriwal spent most of his childhood in north Indian towns such as Sonipat, Ghaziabad and Hisar. He was educated at Campus School in Hisar and at a Christian missionary Holy Child School at Sonipat.

In 1985, he took the IIT-JEE exam and scored All India Rank (AIR) of 563. He graduated from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, majoring in Mechanical engineering. He joined Tata Steel in 1989 and was posted in Jamshedpur. Kejriwal resigned in 1992, having taken leave of absence to study for the Civil Services Examination. He spent some time in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata), where he met Mother Teresa, and volunteered with The Missionaries of Charity and at the Ramakrishna Mission in North-East India and at Nehru Yuva Kendra.

In 1995, Arvind married Sunita, a 1993-batch IRS officer. She took voluntary retirement in 2016 as Commissioner of Income Tax in the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.

The couple have a daughter named Harshita, and a son named Pulkit. Kejriwal is a vegetarian and has been practising the Vipassanā meditation technique for many years. He is diabetic. In 2016, Kejriwal underwent a surgery for his persistent cough problem.