Delhi’s Chief Minister Atishi has retained her Kalkaji seat in the 2025 Delhi assembly elections, despite BJP’s massive victory in the national capital, which was highlighted by the shock defeats of top Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders like the former Chief Minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, the former Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi. The 43-year-old leader, who won the seat in 2020, was up against BJP’s former MP Ramesh Bidhuri and the Congress’ Alka Lamba.

With AAP’s top leaders Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia losing the poll fight, Atishi is expected to play a key role in the upcoming Delhi assembly.

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Atishi became the youngest-ever Chief Minister of Delhi on 17 September last year when AAP Chief Arvind Kejriwal stepped down after he got bail in a corruption case linked to Delhi’s now-scrapped liquor policy of the 2021-22 fiscal. She is the third woman Chief Minister of the city state after Sushma Swaraj and Sheila Dikshit.

Atishi has been actively involved with the party since 2013. She is a member of AAP’s highest decision-making body, the Political Affairs Committee, the governing body of the party. Before she was appointed as the Chief Minister, she also served as the Minister of Education, PWD, Culture, and Tourism in the Delhi Government.

She also served as advisor to the former Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Manish Sisodia, primarily on education, from July 2015 to 17 April 2018 and played a pivotal role in revamping the state of education in government-run schools in the national capital. She was inducted into the Delhi Government as a Cabinet Minister along with Saurabh Bharadwaj after the resignation of Deputy Chief Minister, Manish Sisodia and Health Minister, Satyender Jain.

She had unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha election from the East Delhi seat in 2019 and lost to BJP’s candidate Gautam Gambhir by a margin of 4.77 lakh votes, coming in third. She later contested the 2020 Delhi Assembly election from Kalkaji constituency and became a first-time MLA by defeating Dharambir Singh of BJP by an impressive margin of 11,422 votes. Later, she was made the AAP’s in-charge for its Goa unit. She was also in charge of the Mohalla Sabha Project for the Delhi government.

Born to Delhi University academics Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi, in 2018, Atishi was at the centre of a rather uncalled for controversy regarding her name. Just before the 2019 general election, she dropped ‘Marlena’ from her surname, given by her parents, because she did not want to waste time in proving her identity. According to her party, the name is a portmanteau of Marx and Lenin.

Academically strong, Atishi was raised in the national capital. She completed her schooling from Springdales School, New Delhi and graduated in history from the prestigious St Stephen’s College. Then she went to the University of Oxford, and in 2003, she completed her master’s degree in history on a Chevening scholarship. She went to Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.