Who is Naveen Jaihind, the former AAP leader held over a fist fight with Haryana official?

Not having much of a successful political career, Jaihind announced his withdrawal from active politics in February 2020 after his wife Swati Maliwal, chief of the Delhi Commission for Women, announced their divorce.

Jaihind, who holds a master’s in physical education from Rohtak’s Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU), tried to join the government service as a physical training instructor in 2021. When the Haryana Staff Selection Commission published the result of its test to recruit 1,983 physical training instructors in October 2020, he had made the cut. He told reporters that he had applied for the job many years before joining politics and taken the written test at a Kurukshetra centre in August 2020. He also said he had no interest in returning to politics.

Jaihind used to be considered a close aide of Kejriwal, having been part of the AAP’s core committee at the national level when the latter floated the party.

The AAP made him its Haryana convener in 2016 after it suspended Yogendra Yadav over his criticism of the party.

Jaihind was also among the front-runners for the AAP’s chief ministerial candidature in the 2014 Assembly elections, but he chose not to contest the polls.

Before that, Jaihind contested the Lok Sabha polls in the same year against then chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son Deepender Hooda, but finished a distant fourth, losing his security deposit. He again contested Lok Sabha polls on an AAP ticket and in alliance with the Dushyant Chautala-led JJP in 2019 from Faridabad but had to forfeit his security deposit again.

Born on June 1, 1981, in Rohtak district’s Bhasru-Kalan village, he later added Jaihind to his name after drawing inspiration from Bhagat Singh, Chandrashekhar Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose.

Jaihind entered politics in 2006-07, when he was a student of Class 10. A Jaihind Morcha was constituted in MDU, for which Jaihind organised a blood donation camp and got 6,000 units of blood donated. He also holds a PhD in journalism and a diploma in yoga.

Jaihind had started working with Kejriwal’s Swaraj Abhiyan since 2007 and was a member of the 20-member core team of Anna Hazare when the Gandhian led an anti-corruption agitation in 2011.

The AAP’s state in-charge, Sushil Gupta, said the party had nothing to do with Jaihind. “Naveen is no longer in the Aam Aadmi Party. He quit the party after the 2019 Assembly elections,” the Rajya Sabha member said.