A social activist and educator, Atishi, the Aam Aadmi Party candidate for the East Delhi Lok Sabha seat, took to politics because she felt it is the platform to bring lasting and significant changes in the lives of people.
Atishi is a member of Political Action Committee, the party's top decision-making body.
She dropped her second name 'Marlena' after being declared AAP's East Delhi candidate for the Lok Sabha polls. She says she dropped her second name because she does not want to "waste time in proving her identity".
AAP leaders had said she had dropped the second name so that her opponents do not falsely impute any identity to her.
Her parents Vijay Singh and Tripta Wahi are professors in Delhi University and civil rights activists and her second name Marlena (combination of Marx and Lenin) is due to their Leftist leanings.
Her elder sister Rosa Basanti is married to television anchor and journalist Bhupendra Chaubey.
Atishi went to Springdales School in New Delhi. She studied history at St. Stephen's College, where she stood first in the Delhi University and went on to Oxford University to pursue her Masters on a Chevening scholarship. A few years later she earned her second Master's from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in Educational Research.
Atishi has played a pivotal role in revamping the state of education in government-run schools in the national capital.
She has worked earlier as an advisor to Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and initially focused on cleanliness, upkeep and other infrastructure issues in the schools.
Her worked to turn School Management Committees (SMCs) into functional institutions that keep schools accountable to the community.
Atishi is campaiging for full statehood for Delhi, better transport and education civic facilities for people.
"I am not asking people to vote for me so I can work for them. My work is for them to see. I am in election battlefield telling the voters that I have already done some work. So, if you were to send me to Parliament, I could do much more," Atishi told a TV interviewer.
Both BJP and Congress have fielded strong candidates against her. Delhi goes to the polls on May 12.
--IANS
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