Arvind Kejriwal’s uncle steadfast by his side, but in Delhi CM’s ancestral village some remain sceptical

It is nearly evening and at the Siwani Anaj Mandi an animated Girdhar Lal Bansal is busy playing cards with five men from the village. He chides them for cheating and reshuffles the cards for the next game. But as the conversation shifts to his nephew Arvind Kejriwal, Bansal falls silent.

“He was an honest man and rose to power due to his principles. Now he is in jail, as are Sisodia and Sanjay (Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh). They spoke against Narendra Modi and they arrested him,” says the 70-year-old, who is one of the three brothers of the Delhi Chief Minister’s father Gobind Ram. He lives with family in Gurgaon now and travels to Siwani in Haryana’s Bhiwani district, 170 km from the national capital, by bus every month to check on his house and ancestral land.

Kejriwal, Bansal says, was born in the village on August 16, 1968, but left at an early age for schooling in Hisar. “He would come often, but after assuming the post of the CM, the visits also dropped. Three years ago, he visited Siwani for an event at the local temple,” he says.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader is the fourth CM from Bhiwani, the others being Haryana CMs Bansi Lal, Banarsi Das Gupta, and Master Hukam Singh. Among the locals in his ancestral village, there is palpable discontentment as some say he has not visited them enough since becoming Delhi CM. His arrest also has some of the villagers questioning him.

Jagdish Prasad Kedia, a businessman, says the villagers had high hopes for Kejriwal. “We were proud that someone from our village left his job to work against corruption and later became a chief minister. Around 50 of us from the village went to Delhi to watch the swearing-in ceremony in February 2015. Three years ago, we went to ask him for