Sunday, June 17, 2012

Arvind Kejriwal - an ex-Indian Revenue Service (IRS)

Team Anna: 10 things you may like to know about ex-IRS officer Arvind Kejriwal


ONE of Team Anna Hazare's key aides, Arvind Kejriwal, was an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer who worked as Additional Commissioner of Income Tax in Delhi before opting for a quiet exit of his high profile government job. A crusader for stringent anti-corruption laws in India now, Kejriwal once met Mother Teresa in Kolkata and worked for her for two months. He started his NGO Parivartan informally even when he was in the Income-Tax department. Here are 10 things you may like to know about Kejriwal, a Ramon Magsaysay Award winner and a confidante of Anna Hazare.

1. Hailing from Haryana, 43 year-old Kejriwal is an engineer from IIT-Kharagpur.
2. Worked for the Tata Group before joining Indian Revenue Service in 1995.
3. Before leaving the Tata and joining the IRS, he met Mother Teresa who asked him to work at Kalighat in Kolkata. Kejriwal worked for Mother Teresa for two months.
Spot Kejriwal: IRS officers of 1995 batch 
4. He also traveled inside Bodoland of Assam when militancy was at its peak.
5. Kejriwal thought he would be a misfit in the IRS service, but did not leave the job immediately.
6. Started his NGO Parivartan informally even when he was an Income Tax officer. Received Rs 50,000 donation from his relatives to begin the process. The idea was to appeal people that "don't pay bribe in the tax department, get your work done through Parivartan".
7. Won the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2006.
8. Played a key role in lobbying for the Right To Information Act passed.
9. Kejriwal's wife Sunita is also an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer. They have two children.
10. He lives at Kaushambi in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh. It's just at the outskirts of Delhi.

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