Do we like Arvind Kejriwal?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A real public-service history and no anti-LGBTQ+ words found, but an unproven poisoning claim, a pricey residence audit and a court fight still running.
Kejriwal started out as a tax bureaucrat who walked away from it. He was an Additional Commissioner in the Indian Revenue Service when he went on leave to work on the right to information movement, and founded the grassroots group Parivartan in 2000. In 2006 he won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for helping Delhi's poorest fight corruption.
That clean-outsider image carried him to running Delhi, but it also set him up for a fall. In February 2025 he lost his own New Delhi seat by 4,089 votes to the BJP's Parvesh Verma. He took it on the chin, saying: “We accept the mandate of the people with great humility.”
The big stoush is the Delhi liquor (excise) policy case, where the CBI accused him and others of wrongdoing. On 27 February 2026 a trial court discharged all 23 accused, himself included, and criticised the CBI's investigation. AAP's Punjab president said “truth has prevailed over lies, deceit and political vendetta”. The CBI is challenging the discharge in the Delhi High Court, and I found nothing newer than a May listing, so it isn't over.
The residence row is the other dent. A state audit (CAG) report tabled in the Delhi Assembly in March 2026 found his former official home cost Rs 33.66 crore to renovate, 342 per cent above the estimate, with approvals granted late and one contractor getting work without competitive tendering. The BJP had been calling it the Sheesh Mahal during the 2025 campaign. The report I read carried no response from Kejriwal or AAP.
On the harm test, searches turned up nothing from him against LGBTQ+ people or women, which is a gap in the record, not a clean bill. What did turn up: in January 2025 he alleged Haryana's government was poisoning the Yamuna supply. The Election Commission said he gave no proof and, on a preliminary view, called it promoting disharmony, and the Delhi Jal Board called the claim factually incorrect. He said he'd broken no laws. In December 2024 he demanded a minister's arrest over where Rohingya migrants were settled; critics read that as feeding anti-migrant politics, he aimed it at the Centre, and the minister called it playing with national security.
Elsewhere, Gujarat University has accused him and a colleague of defamation over remarks about the PM's degree; the Supreme Court refused to quash the summons in October 2024, so the trial can proceed. And in April 2026 seven of AAP's ten Rajya Sabha MPs, led by Raghav Chadha, quit to merge with the BJP, with Chadha citing a “toxic work environment”. AAP called them traitors and has sought their disqualification. That is one defector's claim, not a finding.