Raghav Chadha (born 11 November 1988) is an Indian politician and member of 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 ...

. He is the youngest

Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha A Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (abbreviated: MP) is the representative of the Indian states to the one of the two houses of the Parliament of India (Rajya Sabha). Rajya Sabha MPs are elected by the electoral college of the elected ...

from

Punjab, India Punjab (; ) is a States and union territories of India, state in northern India. Forming part of the larger Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, the state is bordered by the States and union territories of India, Indian states of Himachal ...

. He was the Vice Chairman of the

Delhi Jal Board Delhi Jal Board (DJB) is the government agency responsible for supply of potable water to the most of the National Capital Territory region of Delhi, India. Delhi Jal Board was constituted on 6 April 1998 through an Act of the Delhi Legislative ...

and MLA from the Rajendra Nagar assembly constituency in Delhi. Raghav Chadha has been elected as

. He is also a practising chartered accountant.

Early life and career

Born on 11 November 1988 and raised in New Delhi, Chadha received his school education from the capital city's Modern School, Barakhamba Road and graduated from University of Delhi (DU). He then pursued Chartered Accountancy from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, post which he went to the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...

for a certification course of EMBA. In his early career he worked with accountancy firms including

Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of profession ...

, Shyam Malpani, and

Grant Thornton Grant Thornton is the world's seventh-largest by revenue and sixth-largest by number of employees professional services network of independent accounting and consulting member firms which provide assurance, tax and advisory services to private ...

Politics

In 2011, Raghav Chadha joined the uprising against corruption in India, also known as the India Against Corruption movement led by social activist

Anna Hazare Kisan Baburao "Anna" Hazare (; born 15 June 1937) is an Indian social activist who led movements to promote rural development, increase government transparency, and investigate and punish corruption in public life. In addition to organising an ...

. He met

Arvind Kejriwal Arvind Kejriwal (Hindi: �ɾʋin̪d̪ ked͡ʒɾiːʋaːl born 16 August 1968) is an Indian politician, former bureaucrat, and activist who is the 7th and current Chief Minister of Delhi since February 2015. Currently, he is the national conv ...

during the movement. Raghav Chadha has been a part of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) since its inception. Mr. Kejriwal encouraged him in drafting the Delhi Lokpal Bill in 2012, which was also his first political task. He established himself as the AAP's TV face and also became the youngest national spokesperson of the AAP and one of the youngest across parties. When AAP won the

2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly election The Delhi Legislative Assembly election was held on 7 February 2015 to elect 70 members of the Sixth Legislative Assembly of Delhi. The results were announced on 10 February 2015. The Aam Aadmi Party secured an absolute majority in the assembly, ...

with a majority, Chadha at the age of 26 was appointed AAP's national treasurer. In April 2018, the then Union Minister of Home Affairs,

Rajnath Singh Rajnath Singh (; born 10 July 1951) is an Indian politician serving as the Defence Minister of India. He is currently the Deputy Leader of the House Lok Sabha. He is the former President of Bharatiya Janata Party. He has previously served as t ...

, terminated his appointment as an advisor to Sisodia along with 9 other advisors. In 2019, he contested from the South Delhi Parliamentary Constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He lost in the elections to the

BJP 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 ...

candidate,

Ramesh Bidhuri Ramesh Bidhuri (born 18 July 1961) is a Member of Parliament (India), Member of the India Parliament and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Bidhuri and members of his family have been active members of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak ...

and came second. Chadha got the maximum vote share among all the AAP contestants in the election. Since the 1980s,

South Delhi South Delhi is an administrative district of the National Capital Territory of Delhi in India with its headquarters in Saket. Administratively, the district is divided into three subdivisions, Saket, Hauz Khas, and Mehrauli. It is bounded by t ...

has been a BJP stronghold and represented by stalwarts like

Madan Lal Khurana Madan Lal Khurana (15 October 1936 – 27 October 2018) was an Indian politician and former Chief Minister of Delhi from 1993 to 1996. He also served as Governor of Rajasthan in 2004. He was the Union Minister of Parliamentary affairs and Touri ...

and

Sushma Swaraj Sushma Swaraj () (''née'' Sharma; 14 February 1952 – 6 August 2019) was an Indian lawyer, politician, and diplomat who served as the Minister of External Affairs of India in the first Narendra Modi government from 2014 to 2019. She is only ...

. In 2020, as a leader of AAP, he was appointed AAP Punjab co-in-charge for the Punjab Legislative Assembly election. He is recognised as the co-architect of AAP's landslide victory in Punjab when the AAP won 92 out of 117 assembly seats.

MLA in Delhi Assembly

In February 2020, he contested from Rajendra Nagar in

2020 Delhi Legislative Assembly election Legislative Assembly elections were held in Delhi on 8 February 2020 to elect 70 members of the Delhi Legislative Assembly. Voters turnout was recorded at 62.82%, a decline of 4.65% from the previous assembly election in Delhi but 2.2% more th ...

and won against BJP's candidate RP Singh with a margin of 20,058 votes. He polled a massive 57.06% of the total votes. Following the elections, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and assigned the water portfolio in the Delhi Government.

MP in Rajya Sabha

Sandeep Pathak Raghav Chadha Harbhajan Singh Ashok Mittal Sanjeev Arora nominated by AAP to Rajya Sabha

On 21 March 2022 it was announced that Delhi MLA Raghav Chadha along with four others were nominated by AAP for the post of Rajya Sabha members from Punjab for a six-year term starting 2022. No opposition candidate opposed their election. This made him the youngest MP at age 33. He was also appointed as a Member of the Parliament's Standing Committee on Finance in Rajya Sabha. The committee oversees the laws and policies drafted by three union ministries and the

NITI Aayog The NITI Aayog (; abbreviation for National Institution for Transforming India) serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, and fostering cooperative ...

. In April 2022, he said that

settled

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

is and

Rohingyas The Rohingya people () are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar (previously known as Burma). Before the Rohingya genocide in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an ...

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

and uses them to cause

riots A riot is a form of civil disorder commonly characterized by a group lashing out in a violent public disturbance against authority, property, or people. Riots typically involve destruction of property, public or private. The property targeted ...

. Credited with the party's success in Punjab, on 18 September 2022 he was appointed co-in-charge for the

2022 Gujarat Legislative Assembly election Legislative Assembly election was held in Gujarat from 1 to 5 December 2022 in two phases, to elect 182 members of 15th Gujarat Legislative Assembly. The votes were counted and the results were declared on 8 December 2022. The Bharatiya Jana ...

Advisor to the Chief Minister of Punjab

After AAP's landslide victory in the State, Punjab Chief Minister

Bhagwant Mann Bhagwant Singh Mann (born 17 October 1973) is an Indian politician and current Chief Minister of Punjab. He leads the cabinet ministry of Punjab and is a member of the Aam Aadmi Party. He is a former actor, comedian and satirist. He previous ...

appointed Raghav Chadha as the Chairman of an Advisory Panel. A plea challenging his appointment was struck down by the High Court.

Early life and career

Politics

MLA in Delhi Assembly

MP in Rajya Sabha

Advisor to the Chief Minister of Punjab

Electoral performance

References

Further reading