New Delhi: In 2011-12, a politically tumultuous period when India Against Corruption movement had urban Indians in thrall, a young activist with an exceptional academic record was busy experimenting with the Gandhian principle of Gram Swaraj in a village 25 kilometres away from Bhopal.
Born to Delhi University historian couple Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi, widely known in Delhi’s academic circles for their far-left political and civil rights activism, Atishi Marlena Singh was not even remotely associated with the principal actors of the movement — whether its face Anna Hazare or its brain Arvind Kejriwal.
Months before India Against Corruption would metamorphose into the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), it was in Bhopal that Atishi met the closest lieutenant of Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, at a volunteers’ meeting led by him. Atishi felt an instant pull towards the movement, considering Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan, two activists she was familiar with, were also its faces.
In the winter of 2012, Atishi returned to her hometown, Delhi, intending to return to the Gram Swaraj project after her volunteer work with the AAP ended. Only she stayed on, and 12 years later, she is now ready to take charge as the eighth chief minister of Delhi.
Only two women have held the top post before—Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sushma Swaraj, for all of 52 days, and Congress’s Sheila Dikshit for three consecutive terms.
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Atishi’s life
Born as the younger daughter to Singh-Wahi, Atishi had a bright academic career ahead of her. A Bachelor of Arts (History) student at St. Stephen’s College, she emerged as a Delhi University topper in her subject in 2001, following it up with a Masters in Ancient and Modern History from the University of Oxford.
At Oxford, she was a recipient of the Radhakrishnan-Chevening Scholarship. Moreover, in 2005, as one of the six Rhodes Scholars from India that year, she obtained an MA in Educational Research from the Magdalen College of the University of Oxford. For a year in between, she taught at the Rishi Valley school in Karnataka.
At Oxford, Atishi was also “involved a lot” in the anti-Iraq war movement, she told News18 in an interview in 2018.
After her return from Magdalen, Atishi began her Gram Swaraj experiment, which continued till her political plunge in 2012. At the village, Atishi, jointly with a group that included her husband, Praveen Singh, worked with the local community in the areas of education, panchayat governance, and organic farming, among others.
Her rise within the AAP
With the AAP, she was among the chief strategists from day 1. She was a part of the manifesto drafting committee of the AAP in 2013 when the AAP contested its first assembly elections in Delhi. As the AAP’s spokesperson, she was a constant presence in many offices, be it the North Avenue or East Patel Nagar office, which the AAP operated out of in its formative years.
After the 2015 Delhi assembly polls, the infighting that broke out in the AAP, which remained ideologically amorphous, between Kejriwal loyalists and the followers of Yadav-Bhushan threatened to derail her career in the party. However, long seen as a member of the Bhushan camp, Atishi, who initially chose silence, surprised everyone by siding with Kejriwal at the time, mailing a letter to Bhushan and Yadav saying it would “mark a change in our political engagement”.
“I don’t think that our paths can be common anymore,” Atishi wrote, adding she was “appalled” at Bhushan for breaking off negotiations between the two warring camps.
“One of the reasons I joined the AAP was because, at the time, Prashantji’s presence assured me that the AAP will stay the course in the fight against crony capitalism and communism. Today, I believe, the AAP is still that force, and now Prashantji may not be a part of this force, but standing against it,” she added in the letter, which reached Yadav-Bhushan a week after the party removed her from its panel of spokespersons.
Thus began her second innings in the AAP, the party purged off nearly all the dissenters by then, leaving Kejriwal as the undisputed leader. She began working as an education adviser, drawing a token salary of Re. 1 in the office of Sisodia, who had taken charge as the education minister.
In her advisory role, she executed several initiatives undertaken by the AAP government to reform Delhi’s education sector. In April 2018, the Centre removed nine persons performing advisory roles in different Delhi government departments, including Atishi, from their posts, citing a lack of prior approval for the creation of their posts.
Three months later, Atishi, a member of the AAP’s highest decision-making body, the Political Affairs Committee (PAC), was named the AAP’s in-charge for the East Delhi parliamentary constituency, marking the soft launch of her 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign from the seat.
The election campaign saw her shedding her surname, Marlena, which her parents, inspired by Marx and Lenin, had given her, and playing up her Rajput-Kshatriya roots. Her move, purportedly, was a response to the BJP’s alleged whisper campaign, intending to mark her as a Christian. She finished third in the election, behind the BJP’s Gautam Gambhir and Arvinder Singh Lovely, then with the Congress.
Atishi returned to the electoral fray in the 2020 Delhi assembly polls, this time emerging as a winner from the Kalkaji constituency. In March 2023, Atishi, along with Saurabh Bharadwaj, was inducted as ministers into the Delhi Cabinet after the resignations of Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, who went to jail in two separate cases.
As a minister, Atishi gradually went on to take charge of a slew of heavyweight portfolios, ranging from education to finance, law to PWD, and revenue to water. Naturally, after Kejriwal’s arrest in the excise policy case in March this year, she was widely seen as his potential replacement in the event of his resignation.
On Sunday, when Kejriwal walked out of jail on bail and announced his decision to resign and anoint a new CM in his place till the next assembly elections in Delhi, it was evident that Atishi was going to assume the mantle. On Tuesday, as Kejriwal proposed her name in the meeting of the AAP legislative body, all hands instantly went up, giving Delhi its new chief minister.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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Who knows, Atishi might follow in the footsteps of Champai Soren.
After all, she started off as a member of the YoYa-Bhushan coterie but has managed to become the favourite of Kejriwal. Such volte-faces come natural to her.