Arvind Kejriwal’s self-assessment of his decade-plus tenure in Delhi offers an unusually direct view of how political leaders measure urban performance: through scores, flagship promises and responsibility assigned across agencies. His ratings put electricity and the former excise policy at 10 out of 10, education and healthcare at 8 or 9, water supply at 7, and public transport at 7 or 8. But the more revealing part of the interview is not the scorecard itself. It is what the answers disclose about a city where service delivery is divided among multiple governments and agencies, making both achievement and failure difficult to attribute.
Reported by Live Hindustan – NCR from a television interview, Kejriwal said more work remained in education and health despite the Aam Aadmi Party government presenting both sectors as central achievements. He also gave his government full marks for electricity, citing round-the-clock supply and free power. On water, he said substantial work had been completed but that another five years would have been needed to provide 24-hour supply across Delhi. He gave himself 7 marks in that area.
The contrast matters because urban services do not operate as isolated political programmes. Electricity reliability, piped water, public transport, drainage, pollution control and healthcare access depend on physical networks, operating institutions, finance and coordination. A government may announce a policy, but residents experience the outcome through the continuity of supply, the condition of local facilities and the ability of agencies to respond when systems fail.
Kejriwal’s comments on education and health therefore function as more than an admission that unfinished work remained. They illustrate the difference between a government’s preferred policy identity and the point at which an urban service becomes dependable at scale. A political administration can highlight school reforms or neighbourhood clinics, while citizens judge whether facilities remain open, staffed and usable after a change in government.
That question appears sharply in the interview’s discussion of mohalla clinics. Kejriwal alleged that some clinics were shut after his government left office and said he had seen cattle at a clinic in Tilak Nagar. This is a claim attributed to him, not an independently established assessment of all mohalla clinics. Its importance lies in the continuity problem it raises: whether a public facility is treated as a permanent part of the health system or as an initiative associated with the administration that created it.
The same institutional issue appears in his remarks on the Yamuna and air pollution. Kejriwal said air pollution was not entirely within Delhi’s control because pollution, including stubble smoke in winter, came from other states. He argued that the Centre would need to bring six or seven states together to address the problem. On the Yamuna, he said responsibility was divided among the Delhi government, the Delhi Development Authority and other agencies, and suggested creating a separate company on the model of the Delhi Metro, with all relevant bodies transferring their land to it.
The source material does not establish whether such a company will be created, nor does it provide an independent evaluation of the proposed institutional model. However, the argument identifies a real administrative feature of Delhi: the city is governed through overlapping jurisdictions. The Delhi government, the Union government, municipal bodies, the DDA and specialised agencies hold different powers over land, transport, pollution, drainage and public services. This arrangement can make a single elected government highly visible to citizens without giving it complete control over the systems for which it is held responsible.
That division produces a recurring accountability gap. When the Yamuna remains polluted, residents encounter one river and one public failure, not a map of institutional boundaries. When flooding follows heavy rain, the public sees waterlogged roads rather than the separate responsibilities of drainage agencies, road authorities, land-owning bodies and local administrations. Kejriwal’s own ratings reflect this tension: he gave his government 8 or 9 for roads and drainage while also saying that much remained to be done and that a master drainage plan was being prepared.
A plan, however, is not the same as functioning infrastructure. Drainage performance depends on the design and maintenance of drains, the capacity of outfalls, the condition of roads, the management of waste and the protection of natural channels. The interview provides no details about the proposed master plan, its funding, its implementation agency or its completion timeline. Those missing details are important because Delhi’s urban problems are often less about the absence of announcements than about fragmented execution.
Water supply presents a similar gap between progress and universal reliability. Kejriwal said water had reached areas such as Dwarka where it previously did not, that supply had improved in several locations and that water had begun to become cleaner. He also said the target of 24-hour supply would have required five more years. These statements indicate an expansion and improvement agenda, but they do not establish how many households received reliable piped water, how supply varied by neighbourhood or whether infrastructure capacity matched the stated goal.
For residents, the relevant measure is not simply whether a network exists. It is whether water arrives predictably, whether pressure is adequate, whether quality is trusted and whether households must depend on tankers or private storage. The interview does not provide those operational indicators. It does, however, show why service ratings need to be read alongside delivery conditions. A score of 7 may acknowledge progress while also confirming that universal service had not been achieved.
Public transport received a rating of 7 or 8, but the interview as reported does not provide passenger numbers, route coverage, fleet details or a breakdown of the work completed. That absence limits what can be concluded about mobility outcomes. Delhi’s transport system is not only a question of the metro or buses individually; it is also about integration, last-mile access, affordability and the ability of different agencies to plan around a growing city. The available evidence supports identifying transport as an unfinished governance area, but not measuring the scale of the gap.
The electricity assessment is more definitive in political terms. Kejriwal claimed that Delhi had achieved 24-hour electricity and free power during his government, while also alleging that outages had returned after the change in administration. These are claims made by a political leader in an interview, and the supplied report does not independently verify current outage patterns. Their wider significance is that electricity has become a highly visible measure of urban governance: residents experience it directly, and governments can connect reliability and affordability to a broader political promise.
The most contentious part of the self-assessment concerns the excise policy. Kejriwal gave it 10 out of 10 and defended the decision to auction private liquor outlets rather than continue with the earlier system of government-run shops and annual rate increases. He said the policy was implemented in Punjab, where revenue rose from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 12,000 crore. The source also reports that he and former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia spent months in jail after allegations of a scam, that a lower court later acquitted them and that the matter remains pending in the High Court.
These legal and political claims must remain distinct from the policy assessment. A policy can be defended for its intended market design, revenue objective or administrative mechanism, while the conduct surrounding its implementation remains subject to legal proceedings. The interview shows how political accountability operates after a controversial policy: the former chief minister evaluates the policy on outcomes and intent, while the legal system examines allegations under a separate process. The supplied material does not provide the court order or the High Court’s current procedural status beyond saying the matter is pending.
The excise discussion also reveals a broader urban governance dilemma. Revenue-generating policies are often judged by financial returns, but they can also affect public health, neighbourhood conditions, enforcement and access. The report contains Kejriwal’s revenue argument but does not provide evidence on those other outcomes. It would therefore be premature to treat the revenue increase cited in Punjab as a complete measure of policy success or to infer that the same model produced identical results in Delhi.
Kejriwal’s ratings for transparency and governance, at 8 or 9, sit alongside his criticism of institutional fragmentation. This combination is significant. It suggests that the administration viewed governance performance partly through its ability to act within the powers it possessed, while the public often evaluates the city as a single operating system. The gap between those perspectives is where many urban accountability disputes begin.
The interview ultimately confirms three things from the evidence supplied. First, the former chief minister acknowledges unfinished work in sectors his government identified as major priorities. Second, he claims strong performance in electricity and defends the excise policy despite the legal controversy surrounding it. Third, he attributes major problems such as air pollution and Yamuna pollution to responsibilities shared with other governments and agencies. What it does not establish is an independent performance audit of these claims.
For Delhi, the continuing urban question is therefore not whether a former chief minister’s scorecard is generous or critical. It is whether the city can create clear responsibility for services that cross administrative boundaries, preserve functioning facilities across political transitions and publish measurable outcomes that allow residents to judge progress. The next useful evidence would be official service data, agency-level responsibility maps, implementation details for drainage and river-cleaning plans, and the courts’ further proceedings in the excise case.
