Arvind Kejriwal

Arvind Kejriwal is the best-known leader of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and was Chief Minister of Delhi for 49 days in 2013 and 2014 and again from February 2015 until he resigned on 17 September 2024. A former Indian Revenue Service tax officer, he co-founded the citizens' group Parivartan in 2000 and received the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006 for his work in the right-to-information movement. For the Panth he matters for three things: his 2014 move for an SIT on the 1984 killings of Sikhs, AAP's win in Punjab in 2022, and his arrest and later discharge in the Delhi excise policy case.

Key moments

• 29 January 2014: as Delhi Chief Minister he announced that he would take a proposal for an SIT on the 1984 killings to the next cabinet meeting, two days after Rahul Gandhi said some Congress men might have been involved. H.S. Phoolka, the victims' lawyer who had joined AAP, called it a ray of hope (Al Jazeera). The Delhi government went on to order an SIT, but it never took effect because Kejriwal resigned after 49 days (The Peninsula).
• 12 February 2015: the Centre set up its own SIT (The News Minute). In November 2015 Kejriwal said: "To prevent me from forming an SIT, they constituted an SIT a day before the formation of my government" (The Peninsula). He was sworn in on 14 February, two days after the Centre's order (IBTimes India). In June 2016 he asked the Prime Minister to make the Centre's SIT act or dissolve it, saying it had not reopened a single case (The News Minute; The Peninsula).
• 16 March 2022: AAP, which won 92 of 117 seats in Punjab, swore in Bhagwant Mann as Chief Minister at Khatkar Kalan, with Kejriwal present (Business Today).
• 21 March 2024: the Enforcement Directorate arrested him in the Delhi excise policy money-laundering case, the first sitting chief minister to be arrested, The Tribune reported. The agency alleged he conspired to frame the policy to benefit liquor interests; AAP called the arrest politically motivated. The CBI arrested him on 26 June. The Supreme Court granted him bail in the CBI case on 13 September, and he resigned on 17 September, naming Atishi to succeed him.
• 8 February 2025: he lost the New Delhi seat to Parvesh Verma of the BJP by 4,089 votes (ETV Bharat).
• 27 February 2026: Special Judge Jitendra Singh of the Rouse Avenue court discharged Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in the CBI case, finding that the alleged central conspiratorial role could not be substantiated (ETV Bharat). A discharge ends a case before trial and is not a trial verdict. The CBI challenged it in the Delhi High Court, which on 9 March issued notice to the accused and stayed the trial court's adverse remarks against the CBI.

What he is remembered for. His 2014 announcement made an SIT on 1984 a demand of an elected Delhi government, though no SIT of his is reported to have begun work. AAP, which he led to power in Delhi, has governed Punjab since 2022. The cases against him are contested: the agencies make the allegations, and he and AAP say they are political.