Newsmaker | Atishi set to take over as Delhi CM: Backroom face to hand at helm of most departments

In 2015, days before the AAP expelled its founding members Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, Atishi’s fortunes looked shaken too as she was seen as close to the two leaders. In the run-up to the development, the party decided to remove her from the party’s list of spokespersons, fearing she would side with Bhushan and Yadav. Within days, however, Atishi wrote a letter to the two leaders, accusing them of not trying to iron out differences. Picking Kejriwal’s side publicly, she started working as an advisor to Manish Sisodia in the Education Department.

A Rhodes scholar who studied history at Oxford University, she helped shape and implement several of the changes that the government effected in the city’s schools and classrooms. The transformation of schools went on to become one of the AAP’s key planks and something it continues to project as one of the things that sets it apart from other parties and governments.

Atishi’s stint as Sisodia’s advisor came to an end in 2018 after the Union Ministry of Home Affairs objected to the Delhi government’s appointment of 10 advisors, saying that proper procedure was not followed. Atishi, however, continued to remain a key part of the AAP leadership, remaining the go-to person when it came to matters related to the Education Department. She was part of a group in the AAP that worked on policy and its implementation, staying away from active politics.

But all that changed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when the AAP fielded her against Gautam Gambhir of the BJP from East Delhi. She lost but a year later won when the AAP fielded her from Kalkaji for the Delhi Assembly polls.

After that, the AAP deployed her, along with MLAs Durgesh Pathak and Saurabh Bhardwaj, at the forefront of its fight for the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). The AAP managed to win a majority in the December 2022 elections. In the contentious mayoral and standing committee elections in the MCD House, she coordinated the party’s strategy and managed its councillors.

After progressively taking the reins of more and more departments — starting out with Education and the Public Works Departments, which were initially under Satyendra Jain, to being assigned water, revenue and law among others culled from the portfolios of other Cabinet members — Atishi was handed over the charge of the highest number of government departments (more than 13) following the arrests of Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi liquor policy case.