Talk about Manish Sisodia’s ambitions after Delhi election. For now, AAP lets his work speak

Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia has stayed with AAP since the beginning even as many others parted ways. And yet, he has lived largely in CM Arvind Kejriwal shadow.

Delhi deputy CM Manish Sisodia | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint.in

While all the talk is about the Power Couple in the central government – Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah – there is another Delhi duopoly that will be tested this Saturday. That of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia.

Kejriwal is the power-packed politician and impressive orator. Sisodia is the quiet implementer. As the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) goes to the voters with health and education as their big achievements, Sisodia’s stamp on the latter is unmistakable. He remains Arvind Kejriwal’s shadow – a calm, dependable foil to the mercurial chief minister. But does Sisodia nurse ambitions of his own?

“There is no personal ambition. Na use kuch kamake le jaana, na mujhe. Woh bhi khush hai, main bhi khush,” says Arvind Kejriwal. “Hum bahut chhote log hain. Is desh ke log ne bahut pyaar diya, bahut mohabbat di hai, bahut vishwas kiya hai hum logon pe,” the AAP convener adds.

He is talking about his closest ally, Delhi’s Education Minister Manish Sisodia, and the special partnership that they share. On Saturday, Delhi’s voters will decide if they still want this partnership to continue for the next five years.

Activist-cum-journalist meets activist

Among the first person to volunteer for Kejriwal’s newly formed NGO Parivartan in 1998, which Kejriwal had started while on leave from the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), Sisodia started working with common people on raising awareness about the Right to Information (RTI) Act as part of a campaign against inflated electricity bills – Ghoos ko Ghoosa (loosely translated as ‘a punch in the face of corruption’). He was still a journalist at Zee News, where he worked from 1997 to 2005 as a producer and news reader.

Sisodia’s erstwhile colleague Om Prakash, now with Rajya Sabha TV, remembers him being committed to social issues. “Even now I consider him a social worker more than a politician. Logon ki madad karna unke nature mein hai (it’s in his nature to help people),” he says. The two were neighbours in their Vasundhara housing society in Ghaziabad, and Om Prakash says he would ask Sisodia to accompany him to RTI workshops and see that change was possible. This was also the time when Sisodia started a four-page newspaper, Apna Panna, which highlighted issues in his neighbourhood. He also set up an NGO, Kabir.

Sisodia then joined Kejriwal in 2006, when, together with retired IPS officer (and current Puducherry Lieutenant Governor) Kiran Bedi, they started the Public Cause Research Foundation. He has stayed with him even as several other associates – from lawyer Prashant Bhushan to psephologist and social activist Yogendra Yadav who joined them in India Against Corruption (IAC) campaign – parted ways. Both Kejriwal and Sisodia share a desire to transform society, and bring about actual democracy. As Sisodia says: “Jisko hum nautanki kehte hain woh loktantra hai. Ab tak jo hotey aa raha hai woh nautanki hai (What we call drama is democracy; what’s been happening so far in the name of democracy was drama).”

Not everyone thinks Sisodia’s motives are unalloyed. Shazia Ilmi who left the party in 2014 and joined the BJP, says Sisodia has always controlled the purse-strings, whether in Parivartan or in AAP. “He was responsible for the funding from Ford Foundation for the NGO Kabir. He was responsible for disbursing salaries. Arvind does the thinking and talking, Manish does the organising.” She told The Print that she blamed him for cutting off Kejriwal from others such as Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav who were expelled from the party in 2015. “If you see the current organisation of AAP, it is only those who were with them in the Kabir and Parivartan days who have survived and thrived. Manish is Arvind’s biggest raazdar (confidant),” she adds.

Devoted follower

A journalist who has been covering Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia since the days of IAC says, “In early 2011, when Anna Hazare came to Delhi, we often thought Manish was Arvind’s handyman. He was assigned the duty of picking up Anna from the airport in his grey Alto.” It was not accidental, says Ilmi. “Arvind wanted to control what Anna was saying or doing and who better than Manish to do so?” When the joint drafting committee on the Lokpal Bill (the demand of IAC) was formed, Sisodia did not find a place in it, but would drive Anna to the North Block for then-Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s office and stand outside for hours with the journalists.

Those were the days when Sisodia would always seem nervous when questioned by the journalists – even though he had spent many years in All India Radio, then FM radio and finally with Zee News. “From the beginning, he looked more like a follower, rather than a leader in the making,” says the journalist to The Print, requesting anonymity.

And a devoted follower he has been. Ashutosh, also a journalist who joined the AAP, calls Sisodia “a gentleman who has evolved into a good politician. His plus point is his very stable demeanour. He is not a maverick like Kejriwal but is fully submerged in the AAP ideology”. Ashutosh rates Sisodia a better administrator than Kejriwal.

“He is cool and his man-management is far better than many might like to believe,” he adds in a comment to The Print. Doesn’t he ever get tired of being in Kejriwal’s shadow? “No,” says Ashutosh. “That is his strength and also the strength of the party.”

Heavy lifter

In handling portfolios of education, finance, planning, tourism, land & building, women & child development, art, culture & languages, Sisodia does much of the heavy lifting in the Delhi government. His special interest in education stems from his father, Dharampal Singh, being a government college lecturer in Pilkhuwa, a town in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh. Dharampal Singh’s struggle, both professional and personal, inspired Sisodia to effect changes in Delhi’s education system, says a friend of the minister.

Pilkhuwa is where Sisodia grew up, always the “teacher’s son”, before coming to Delhi for a diploma in journalism at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Sisodia and Kejriwal share a common bond, that of outsiders who gatecrash any privileged club. Journalists would often jokingly compare Sisodia to Bharat guarding the seat of power for Kejriwal’s Ram.

Initially, says a source, it was a huge struggle for Sisodia to figure out how to run the government. “He always felt the IAS officers were taking him for a ride and didn’t take him seriously,” adds the source. “But he worked very hard. He would spend every morning studying, preparing questions, and making notes, arming himself with information so as not to appear a fool in front of the bureaucrats. He would talk about how he has learnt to outsmart them and get them to work after a full night of study.”

He has evolved as an administrator – the Delhi model of education, including its happiness curriculum, has won many accolades. His role in developing the government school system is particularly important, notes academic and AAP supporter Kamal Mitra Chenoy. ”He has also played a part in the creation of mohalla clinics along with Health Minister Satyendra Jain. Similarly, he kept an eye on the public transport system, both buses and metro. This is merely a portion of his work, which has increased his legitimacy in the AAP and in the eyes of the public,” he told ThePrint.

Sisodia has improved his image as a communicator too. Admiring profiles on him mention how he is a “natural thinker”. Journalists covering his first election in Patparganj assembly constituency in 2013, where Parivartan had worked in large slum areas, still recall how he would often fumble while giving speeches. Not so much now.

Manish Sisodia is invaluable to the AAP given Arvind Kejriwal’s once and future ambition to acquire a national footprint. On Saturday, as the national capital goes to vote, it will prove just how valuable Kejriwal and his party have been to Delhi – and once again, what may go largely unnoticed is Manish Sisodia’s role in it.

The author is a senior journalist. Views are personal.