New Delhi: Sunita Agarwal (now Sunita Kejriwal), a former 1993-batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer who served in the Income Tax (I-T) department for 22 years, has been trying to hold the fort for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) following her husband and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on 21 March in connection with alleged irregularities in the Delhi government’s now-withdrawn excise policy.
While most have lately known her as the wife of the Delhi chief minister and as someone who has made public appearances alongside him during his election campaigns, temple visits and during the 2011 India Against Corruption movement, Sunita Kejriwal is now in the limelight as among the prominent faces of the AAP in her husband’s absence.
Much speculation has arisen about whether she would officially take up the chief minister’s duties and her political designs, but current and former AAP members underline that Sunita Kejriwal has always maintained a distance from politics and the limelight.
It’s not widely known that Sunita opted for voluntary retirement in 2016 after over 20 years of government service. Her final role was as the chief commissioner of Income Tax at the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal in Delhi.
She hails from New Delhi and has a postgraduate degree in zoology.
While in government service, she had a stint at the Serious Fraud Investigation Office and handled cases involving various prominent business enterprises. Her many postings included Amritsar and Nagpur.
She is believed to have crossed paths with Kejriwal during her training in Bhopal and the couple got married in 1995.
“Sincere”, “dedicated” “honest” and “punctual” is how her former colleague and batchmate Sunil Sharma describes her.
“I met her in Mussoorie. She was a very good gymnast, very flexible, and had excellent self-defence skills. She is a bold person who would never sound defeated or complain. Her work was near perfect even after all the workload she had,” he told ThePrint.
“I have known her as a strong person who always stood by her husband. She is a compassionate, polite, and humble person whom I have never seen indulging in politics,” said journalist and former AAP member Ashutosh.
“I have very fond memories of her… She was always respectful to the party members,” he added.
With the AAP chief in Tihar Jail, Sunita Kejriwal can be seen in video statements sitting on the same chair from which her husband addressed the public.
Ravi Srivastava, a founding member of AAP, told ThePrint that Sunita has not been involved much in party affairs and doesn’t visit the party office at all. Whomsoever wishes to meet her, they go to the CM’s residence, he said. “While all the decisions are being taken by senior AAP members, including Atishi, Saurabh Bhardwaj, Gopal Rai and Kailash Gehlot, they are being endorsed by Kejriwal. She is just passing his message forward,” he added.
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‘She will need grooming and guidance’
Union minister and BJP leader Anurag Thakur has compared Sunita to Rabri Devi, wife of former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav who began making announcements in his absence when he was arrested in the fodder scam. She eventually assumed the role of Bihar CM.
As Sunita was seen sharing the stage with leaders of the INDIA bloc at the 31 March mega rally in Delhi, BJP leader Bansuri Swaraj asked if she was the new official CM of Delhi since she has been delivering messages on Kejriwal’s behalf.
The question is sure to have crossed the minds of the general public too. Can Sunita Kejriwal step up to become the new CM of Delhi?
“She is a newcomer as far as politics is concerned. She will need some grooming and guidance, so this speculation might not be right that she will take on the CM’s role,” Srivastava said.
However, he added, “the way this government (BJP-led Centre) is pressuring Arvind Kejriwal”, in that case, whatever decision the AAP high command might take will be binding on everybody and they might choose Sunita to take up leadership of Delhi.
“She has good administrative skills but at the same time handling the affairs of politics and taking the role of CM are different things. I think she has not stepped out of her house and taken part in administrative decisions of the party in the past,” he said.
For all those questioning her intent to create a space for herself in politics, Anand Kumar, an expelled member of the AAP, said Sunita has so far kept a “cultivated distance” from her husband’s politics so that nobody blames her for dabbling in power games.
“Though I really don’t appreciate the politics of Mr Kejriwal and his liquor policy; he expelled us (referring to other party leaders expelled along with him) for no good reason; to make such a guess about a woman who has tried her best to keep away from the abuse of power, is not right,” Kumar, a retired professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, told ThePrint.
Kumar had accompanied Sunita and Arvind Kejriwal for the latter’s nomination in 2014 from Varanasi, from where PM Modi was his contender. He asserted that though that was the peak of Kejriwal’s career, he always found Sunita staying aside, taking care of the couple’s two children and not meddling even when he was surrounded by media persons.
“She has always shown courage and determination for Kejriwal,” he added.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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