Ashish Khetan is an Indian lawyer and journalist.

Political life

In 2014, he joined the

Aam Aadmi Party The Aam Aadmi Party (; AAP) is a political party in India, as one of the national political parties. The AAP was founded in November 2012 by Arvind Kejriwal and his then-companions following the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement, popular ...

and fought the

2014 Indian General Election General elections were held in India in nine phases from 7 April to 12 May 2014 to elect the members of the 16th Lok Sabha. With 834 million registered voters, they were the largest-ever elections in the world until being surpassed by the 2019 ...

from

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

but lost to

Bharatiya Janata Party The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; ; ) is a political party in India, and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under Narendra Modi ...

's candidate

Meenakshi Lekhi Meenakshi Lekhi (born 30 April 1967) is an Indian politician and the current Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture of India from 7 July 2021. She is a Member of Parliament from New Delhi Parliamentary constituency in the 16th an ...

. In 2015, he was appointed as vice chairman of the Dialogue and Development Commission (DDC) of Delhi, a think tank of the

Delhi government The Government of Delhi, officially the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) is the governing body of the Union Territory of Delhi, whose urban area is the seat of the Government of India. It also governs the city or l ...

. He was given the rank of Cabinet Minister for his contributions to the government. In April 2018, he resigned from the DDC to practice law. In August 2018, he left the Aam Aadmi Party, citing the desire to pursue law as a full-time profession. Khetan was pulled into controversy when he hurt the religious sentiments of

Sikhs Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism (Sikhi), a monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term ...

by referring to the manifesto of the Aam Aadmi Party as the

Guru Granth Sahib The Guru Granth Sahib ( pa, ਗੁਰੂ ਗ੍ਰੰਥ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ) is the central holy religious scripture of Sikhism, regarded by Sikhs as the final, sovereign and Guru Maneyo Granth, eternal Guru following the lineage of the Sikh gur ...

, which he later apologised for.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khetan, Ashish Aam Aadmi Party candidates in the 2014 Indian general election Aam Aadmi Party politicians 21st-century Indian politicians Delhi politicians Living people 1976 births