New Delhi:
Chief Minister Atishi is aiming for a second consecutive term from the Kalkaji seat in the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections. She rose quickly in the AAP after national convenor Arvind Kejriwal announced his resignation and handed over leadership to her.
Atishi became the youngest person to become the chief minister of Delhi.
Here are five facts about Atishi:
- Atishi was born in June 1981 to Delhi University professors Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in History from St. Stephen’s College, and completed her Master’s in History from Oxford University in 2003 on a Chevening Scholarship. Two years later, she studied at the Magdalen College in Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.
- Her parents, believers in communist ideology, gave her the unique surname “Marlena,” a mix of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. A founding member of AAP since 2013, Atishi initially worked as an adviser on education policies. She also spent a few years in a Madhya Pradesh village focusing on organic farming and progressive education.
- In 2015, Atishi became an advisor to Delhi’s education minister Manish Sisodia and helped implement the Happiness Curriculum. She later dropped “Marlena” from her name after the BJP allegedly used it to polarise voters by suggesting she was a Christian or a foreigner. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Atishi contested from East Delhi but lost to BJP’s Gautam Gambhir by over 4 lakh votes, finishing third behind Congress’s Arvinder Singh Lovely.
- Atishi’s first major electoral success came in 2020 when she contested the Delhi Assembly election from Kalkaji and won by over 11,000 votes against BJP’s Dharambir Singh. Before that, she was appointed as an AAP spokesperson in 2018.
- Atishi became more prominent in Delhi politics after Manish Sisodia’s arrest in the Delhi liquor policy case. She was inducted into the cabinet and given more responsibilities after Arvind Kejriwal’s arrest in the same case. She was in charge of portfolios such as education, finance and public works. She is the third woman chief minister of Delhi after Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit.
