Arvind Kejriwal

Some Lesser Known Facts About Arvind Kejriwal

• Does Arvind Kejriwal smoke?: No

• Does Arvind Kejriwal drink alcohol?: No

• After completing his study from IIT Kharagpur, he served in TATA steel.

• He met his wife, Sunita during their Civil Services Training.

• He is a pure vegetarian. He begins his day with Yoga.

  

• Kejriwal cleared the Civil Services exam in his first attempt.

• He has also worked with the social activist and Nobel Laureate, Mother Teresa.

• One of his classmates revealed in an interview that in college days in Kharagpur, Arvind used to go to slums to teach kids who could not afford to study.

• In 2006, Arvind Kejriwal was awarded Ramon Magsaysay Award for playing a significant role to enact RTI in India.

• He donated his Magsaysay award money to an NGO.

• During the days when he used to work as an IRS officer, Kejriwal refused to have a peon and used to clean his table himself.

• In 2006, he resigned from the Indian Revenue Service to devote his full time to social services.

• Neither does he celebrates his birthday nor his children.

• In 2011, Kejriwal, along with Anna Hazare, staged India Against Corruption (IAC) movement in Ramlila Maidan, Delhi, to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill, which got failed due to political tactics of Congress, BJP, and other political parties.

  

• After the failure of the movement, Arvind Kejriwal and many other IAC team members decided to launch a political party to fight against the corruption in India. However, Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi, and many other IAC team members were against entering politics.

• He has a habit of checking each and every document file, each and every line of documents, marking main lines with the marker and making sure that everything is correct. Once, his Colleagues said that he had cross-checked the Jan Lokpal Bill about 100 times.

• Once his blue Wagon R car was stolen near Delhi Secretariat. Software Engineer Kundan Sharma had gifted this car to Kejriwal. However, it was found abandoned in Ghaziabad.

• On 20 January 2015, while going to file his nomination in the 2015 Delhi Assembly Elections, he had to postpone it for the next day. A similar event took place during the 2020 Delhi Assembly Elections when he had to postpone his nomination; even the date was the same, i.e., 20 January. In both the scenario, the reason given by Kejriwal for the postpone of his nomination was that a huge crowd of his supporters had created almost a traffic jam like situation, and hence, he could not reach the collectorate to file his nomination.

  

• On 17 September 2024, Arvind Kejriwal stepped down as the Chief Minister of Delhi. He was succeeded by Atishi  Marlena.

• On 24 January 2025, the Punjab Police, which was providing security to Arvind Kejriwal, was removed from his security detail after a complaint of the Delhi Police to the Election Commission. The security was then handed over to the Delhi Police. AAP criticised the Punjab Police over the issue.