WHO IS KIRAN WALIA

Kiran Walia is a Delhi-based professor-turned-politician and a member of the Congress party. She represented the Hauz Khas and Malviya Nagar constituencies as an MLA in the Delhi Assembly from 1999 to 2013. In the 2015 Assembly election, however, the Congress fielded her from the New Delhi seat against the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) chief ministerial candidate Arvind Kejriwal, who had defeated incumbent CM Sheila Dikshit in the 2013 elections. Walia was able to secure only 5.39 per cent of the votes and stood a distant third. The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) Nupur Sharma polled 28.73 per cent votes and stood second to Kejriwal’s 64.14 per cent.

 

Born in Delhi, Walia did her MA in political science from the Delhi University (DU). Before entering politics, she worked as an associate professor at DU. She also founded an NGO Swabhiman, which raised women’s issues. Later, she got associated with the Indian National Congress and was chosen to contest against Sushma Swaraj in the 1998 Delhi election, which she lost. In a by-election in 1999, she again contested from the Hauz Khas seat and became a member of the Legislative Assembly.

 

After that, she held various portfolios and positions in the subsequent Congress governments in Delhi. She was the chairperson of the Delhi Women’s Commission, minister for women and child development and a member of various committees in the Sheila Dikshit government.

 

In the 2020 Delhi election, Kiran Walia is expected to play an important role as a senior member of the Congress and even contest from an important constituency.