NEW DELHI // Before Delhi’s legislative elections last year, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was widely written off as a bunch of novices who would flounder in politics.
But running on an anti-corruption platform the party won 28 out of 70 seats and this was sufficient to form the next government to govern Delhi with the support of one of India’s traditional powerhouse political parties, Congress, which won eight seats.
Just more than a year old, the AAP’s rise has been meteoric but it now faces the challenge of governing a metropolis of 22 million people beset with problems of inflation, women’s safety and electricity deficits.
Arvind Kejriwal, the force behind the AAP, was sworn in last month as Delhi’s new chief minister. The 45-year-old former civil servant has kept the key portfolios of power and finance within his control.
Alongside him he has named a cabinet of six ministers, all of whom — like Mr Kejriwal — are new faces in electoral politics. Their youth and fresh backgrounds, combined with the baptism by fire that awaits them, will make these ministers among the most closely scrutinised in Delhi’s political history.
Manish Sisodia
Ministries of Revenue, Education, Public Works, and Urban Development
As Mr Kejriwal’s closest colleague in the AAP, it was always expected that Manish Sisodia, 41, would be a part of his cabinet. Having worked as a journalist with the state-owned All India Radio and the Zee News television channel, Mr Sisodia left the field in 2005 to lobby alongside Mr Kejriwal for India’s Right to Information Act, which was passed that year.
By 2011, when Mr Kejriwal was leading a series of protests against political graft, Mr Sisodia worked in his team to draft an anti-corruption bill. When Mr Sisodia participated in the protests that year, demanding that parliament pass this version of the bill, he was among those who were arrested and briefly jailed.
“We want to finish the netas’ [political leaders] VIP culture in Delhi,” Mr Sisodia said before Mr Kejriwal’s swearing-in ceremony. True to that promise, his behaviour has been conspicuously modest. Like Mr Kejriwal, he took a metro train to the swearing-in ceremony on Saturday, in contrast to the SUVs used by most Indian politicians. He also used the metro to visit a school in south-west Delhi and he was later spotted eating dinner at a roadside kiosk.
One of Mr Sisodia’s foremost challenges will involve the overburdened school system in Delhi. After a day spent inspecting schools, he told reporters: “The facilities are a mess. A child spends seven to eight hours in school without even toilets. How will we gain their trust?”
Rakhi Birla
Ministries of Social Welfare, and Women & Child Development
Of the crop of Delhi’s new ministers, Rakhi Birla’s story is perhaps the most remarkable. Only 26, Ms Birla defeated a four-time legislator and former minister in his constituency by a margin of more than 10,000 votes in the December state election. She was born into a Dalit — or lower-caste — family. Her father was a social worker and her mother was employed as a janitor in a government school. After school, Ms Birla went on to a graduate with a degree in journalism, which led to a job at a television news channel Jain TV. When she was assigned to cover Mr Kejriwal’s anti-corruption protests in 2011, she found herself drawn to his movement.
As a minister partly in charge of women’s safety in Delhi — a city notoriously dangerous for women — Ms Birla faces an onerous task. But her inexperience has not, in these early days, worried her. “If you are honest and confident,” she told the Economic Times newspaper last week, “no one can treat you like a child.”
Somnath Bharti
Like Mr Sisodia, Somnath Bharti, 39, took the metro to work on his first day as a Delhi minister. He beat a three-time legislator from the Congress party, Kiran Walia, in the poll. He has promised that his party would “completely overhaul” the administration’s deficiencies.
Mr Bharti graduated with a master’s degree in mathematics from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, before then pursuing a degree in law. His corporate law firm, Bharti & Associates, especially working for people who have been falsely implicated or incarcerated in
criminal cases. On his affidavit filed with the Election Commission, Mr Bharti showed assets of more than 14 million rupees (Dh825,075).
Saurabh Bharadwaj
Ministries of Transport, and Food & Supplies
Until 2005, Saurabh Bharadwaj was content to work full time in the software industry, in a company in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. That year, however, the rape of a young girl spurred him to change tack. Even as he helped the girl’s parents secure legal representation, he completed his own law degree, so that he could represent and assist the poor.
Mr Bharadwaj, 34, won his constituency in south Delhi by more than 13,000 votes. In the process, he defeated Ajay Malhotra, the son of a veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader VK Malhotra. His first day in office last month was a busy one. He told the television news channel NDTV: “It was a new experience for me There are so many officers, and I think they’re all well educated and well qualified, [so] it’s strange to see them calling me ‘Sir’. That was very strange.”
Girish Soni
Ministries of Labour, Skill Development, and Scheduled Castes & Tribes
Girish Soni, born into a lower caste family, was never wealthy enough to be able to attend university. Instead, after completing a course in refrigeration engineering, he joined his family’s struggling leather trading company and helped it prosper. Within the AAP, Mr Soni, 49, has been particularly vocal on the importance of providing cheaper electricity and water to Delhi’s poorest.
Satyendra Jain
Ministries of Health and Industries
An architect by training, Satyendra Jain, 49, used to work for the government’s public works department, but like Mr Kejriwal, he quit public service after getting frustrated with the corruption around him. Mr Jain committed perhaps the first major gaffe by the new AAP government. On Monday, his first full working day, he arrived to address a news conference two hours late, apologising profusely for his tardiness. “I did not know where the press conference was,” he explained.
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
