Rise and fall: A crusader who became part of politics he set out to dismantle

Looking back

- Dhrubo Jyoti and Alok KN Mishra

NEW DELHI: In the fog of winter in the Capital in 2011, a silhouette emerged – a bespectacled IIT Kharagpur graduate who eschewed his Indian Revenue Service (IRS) position to find himself at the vanguard of India's most significant anti-corruption movement in four decades. With a basic ballpoint pen in his pocket, muffler wrapped around his neck, baggy sweaters and driving a blue Wagon R car, Arvind Kejriwal quickly caught the imagination of the middle-class as an archetypal common man.

As his then mentor Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement galvanised the youth, Kejriwal emerged as its chief strategist. In the sweltering heat of Ramlila Maidan, he transformed the arcane Jan Lokpal Bill into a compelling street rhetoric. And when he announced a nascent political party named after the "aam aadmi" in November 2012 at the historic Jantar Mantar, it marked the commoner's metamorphosis from activist to politician.

Less than a year later, the infant party was racing to take the establishment heavyweights – the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. It emerged from the melee of the poll season with an astonishing 28 seats. The commoner had gripped the pulse of the Capital.

A new political era had begun.

That was in 2013. Twelve years later, on Saturday, that story came full circle.

Kejriwal – now shorn of his muffler, ballpoint pen, and once-signature cough – crashed to the worst defeat of his political career.