Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain: Trusted aides of Delhi CM Kejriwal

PTI, Mar 1, 2023, 10:25 AM IST

Image source: PTI / File

New Delhi: AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain, both of whom resigned from the Delhi cabinet, were key faces of the city government and were instrumental in steering the national capital through the COVID-19 crisis.

AAP’s second-in-command, Sisodia was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on Sunday in connection with alleged irregularities in the formulation and implementation of the Delhi excise policy for 2021-22.

Jain was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in May last year in a money laundering case.

Sisodia is considered closest to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. He has been with Kejriwal before the inception of the party.

Under him, Delhi got its own education board and a Sainik School. He was also involved in implementing initiatives like Mission Buniyaad, Happiness Curriculum, Deshbhakti Curriculum and Entrepreneurship Curriculum.

During the pandemic, he was the nodal in-charge minister of COVID-19 management.

He held 18 departments before resigning from the state cabinet on Tuesday. He held key portfolios like education, Public Works Department, finance and all other departments not specifically allotted to any minister.

He was also looking after portfolios that were held by Jain before his arrest.

Sisodia was a journalist before he joined the struggle for the passage of the Right to Information Act and played a key role in laying the foundation of the Jan Lokpal Movement.

During his tenure as education minister, he was credited for significantly transforming the infrastructure and quality of education in Delhi government schools.

As finance minister, Sisodia doubled the budgetary allocation for education, amounting to almost 25 per cent of the entire budget of the state.

He has been deemed as one of the best education administrators and educationists in government by AAP leaders.

Jain, who served as Delhi’s health minister before his arrest, was instrumental in building ‘mohalla clinics’ across the national capital, and implemented schemes like the free surgery scheme, and electricity and water subsidy.

A trusted aide of Kejriwal, he saw Delhi through the coronavirus crisis, especially during the second wave when the national capital battled a shortage of beds and oxygen.

After Jain’s arrest, Kejriwal had said that he was put behind bars to impede the progress of work being carried out under him.

Even after his arrest, Jain continued to be a minister without any portfolios in the cabinet. While he was in prison, videos of him getting head massages and body massages surfaced, which the AAP said were physiotherapy sessions.

The two ministers tendered their resignations on Tuesday amid corruption allegations, with the AAP saying they had become victims of the BJP’s ”politics of arrogance”.