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Raaj Kumar Anand to be new Delhi minister
Anand, the Patel Nagar MLA, will replace Rajendra Pal Gautam, who resigned as social welfare minister after his presence at a religious conversion event sparked a political controversy earlier this month.
New Delhi Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday announced that he has recommended Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator Raaj Kumar Anand’s name for induction into the state government cabinet.
“I have recommended his name for induction into the cabinet to the LG (lieutenant governor Vinai Kumar Saaxena),” Kejriwal said at a press conference.
It is not yet clear which portfolios Anand will be assigned.
The date for the oath-taking ceremony is yet to be announced. No reaction was available from the LG’s office.
Anand, the Patel Nagar MLA, will replace Rajendra Pal Gautam, who resigned as social welfare minister after his presence at a religious conversion event sparked a political controversy earlier this month.
Anand is a member of the AAP’s national council. A postgraduate in political science, he and his wife Veena Anand joined the anti-corruption movement in 2011 that set the ground for the formation of the AAP, and in the 2013 assembly election his wife Veena Anand won as MLA from Patel Nagar.
Like Gautam, Anand too belongs to the Dalit community.
“I was born in Dev Nagar near Karol Bagh. My life has been full of struggles. Poverty forced my father to unwillingly send me to his in-laws’ place in Aligarh… I had to work as a child labourer in a lock factory in Aligarh to arrange money for my education. Later, I completed my higher studies with money I got by giving tuition. Due to poverty and lack of employment opportunities… I hired some unemployed women and asked them to collect scrap foam from outside factories in the Bapa Nagar area and used them to make pillows and sell them,” Anand, who is currently into the business of rexin and leather, told HT.
He also thanked Kejriwal for giving him the opportunity to serve as a minister.
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