Kapil Mishra. (File Photo)From being appointed as the youngest minister in the AAP’s government in 2015 to a rebel leader often seen speaking against the party and sitting on dharnas with BJP MLAs, Kapil Mishra (38) has done a volte-face in the year and a half since he was sacked as Law minister and Delhi Jal Board chairperson.
Mishra was part of the India Against Corruption movement, and joined AAP when the party was formed.
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His mother, Annapurna Mishra, is a BJP leader who was also councillor from Sonia Vihar.
After joining AAP, Mishra contested the Assembly elections in 2013 but lost. He contested from Karawal Nagar constituency again in 2015, and won by a margin of over 44,000 votes.
A popular leader, AAP picked Mishra for the cabinet when former law minister Jitender Tomar was asked to resign over allegations that his law degree was fake.
In 2014, when AAP candidates were asking for donations, Mishra had come up on top, getting more donations than even party chief Arvind Kejriwal.
Fissures between AAP and Mishra started to show in May 2017, when murmurs of a cabinet rejig started doing the rounds. He told the media that he had proof Kejriwal and Health and PWD minister Satyendar Jain were involved in corruption, and that he had seen the latter hand Kejriwal Rs 2 crore.
On May 6, he was removed from the cabinet, allegedly for failing to meet people’s water demands before municipal elections, which AAP lost. Mishra was later suspended from the party.
At the time of his suspension, many had linked the development to his support for senior party member Kumar Vishwas who, despite having spoken against the AAP leadership several times, is still a member. Since June 2017, Mishra has been regularly seen with BJP MLAs. A poster of him asking for support to uproot Kejriwal is pasted outside the Delhi BJP office.
