Gated Welfare In Kalkaji: Atishi’s Welfare Push, Limited Access, And A Split Verdict

The garbage mound has not been picked up for the last two days, but that’s ‘normal’, say the residents of JJ colony near Kalkaji Post Office. “Wo chotte chotte baal wali?” a little girl asks with a grin as her mother speaks to Outlook about Atishi. She says that Atishi came here for a shop’s inauguration. That is the only time she’s visited this place since her re-election as MLA in 2025. The mother shushes her, says Atishi is nice. Aam Admi Party (AAP) gave them a ‘lot’.

The most visible welfare of Atishi so far seems to be gates. And boom barriers. In the more affluent parts of Kalkaji, almost every gate of the housing societies carries the message: Atishi Made This Gate.

“The gates, benches are free ads,” says Kartik Awasthi, RWA president of a gated society in K Block. He explains that MLAs get ten crore in funds for their wards. Atishi, with AAP out of power, cannot get new sewers or big infrastructure done. “And she knows we didn’t vote for her. Her vote bank was the jhuggi, so here, she puts gates and benches—plastered with her name...”

Back in the jhuggi, not far from the society, the summer heat makes the garbage stink. Saroj has lived here for 18 years. For her, having a woman MLA as well as a woman Councillor (Yogita Singh of the BJP) feels comfortable. “I think I could share my problems with her,” she says.

She is glad that water supply to their home has improved since Atishi (who previously held the portfolio). Atishi went on a water ‘satyagraha’ in June 2024, accusing Haryana of withholding 100 million gallons of ‘Delhi’s’ water daily. She fasted. The Opposition called it theatrics. She fell sick and was hospitalised.

Months later, she became the youngest Chief Minister of Delhi.

Born in 1981 to a teacher couple, the Chevening and Rhodes scholar, with two Master’s degrees from Oxford, was an integral part of the Aam Aadmi Party’s formation in 2013. In 2015, she also participated in the Jal Satyagrah in Madhya Pradesh, an off-shoot of the Narmada protests.

Atishi, like other AAP leaders at the time, offered a refreshing change—not legacy leaders built off of familial or business ties.

While a part of the party since its inception, she didn’t contest till 2019, when she faced the BJP’s Gautam Gambhir in the Lok Sabha elections for the East Delhi seat. She lost by a huge margin. But she contested in the 2020 Vidhan Sabha election from Kalkaji and won—and repeated the victory in 2025 even as AAP lost power in Delhi.

For six years, Kalkaji has been under MLA—and briefly Chief Minister—Atishi. A woman. But residents say that things haven’t changed much. Almost every gated society has a slum in its backyard, and this has angered residents. “The whole main road is unpassable. They have let encroachment flourish,” says the general secretary of a gated society, also near a slum. The general secretary, who doesn’t wish to be named, calls it a crisis. “...They (Atishi, Yogita Singh) won’t do anything because we (gated societies) don’t matter. They just want to please the vote bank.”

The RWA chief doesn’t wish to be named because they would need to beg the MLAs and councillors for future needs. “We didn’t have a proper water supply for eight months. But the taps of the jhuggi never ran dry,” he says. Outlook could not verify this claim. Across RWAs—where the price of houses starts at two crore, there was a common theme—too much attention to the jhuggis.

Roughly a kilometre away, there is another JJ colony—but once there were two. In June 2025, shortly after the BJP came to power, one massive JJ colony near the Govindpuri fish market was demolished by bulldozers. The ruins—where families once lived and children played, are now a graveyard of concrete and bricks.

A man sits outside a closed shop near the ruin. When asked if he knows who Atishi is, he says, “woh jhaaduwali, jo jhaadu se jeeti thi, wo wali,” pointing to a banner with Atishi and Arvind Kejriwal’s faces outside the demolished site. Then adds, no, he hasn’t seen her—she never comes here.

Atishi did come after the demolition to register her protest. She alleges she was detained; Delhi Police denies the claim.

Deeper inside is another JJ colony. A group sits by their doors, facing each other; the cramped alley is barely two-three feet wide. Forty-seven-year-old Om Prakash was born here. And he has seen Atishi. “She came after the demolition, but by then everything was lost.” Seventy-five-year-old Muniram counters, “She also came for that road construction, did it overnight—that was kind.” Muniram’s wife laughs, “It’s not like she built it herself. Did she ever come after that?”

Manisha, 23, interjects. She feels is proud to have Atishi as an MLA and former Chief Minister. “She worked on schools. My sister loves the school. She worked on mohalla clinics—the BJP took that away. Now we have nowhere to go,” she laments.

As the conversation shifts to women’s representation, Om Prakash says, “I read on WhatsApp... that there are 78 women MPs but no one has asked to hang rapists yet. So, man or woman, they are politicians. Atishi or Yogita or Ramesh (Bidhuri). Their gender doesn’t matter.”

On RWAs’ allegation of jhuggi prioritisation, the group laughs and points to the area around them. Open sewers, pigeonhole rooms, and open garbage mounds. “We pay the ‘committee’ (under the table) for our stalls, these RWAs call us encroachment. How is it illegal if authorities take money for it?” asks one of them.

Encroachment has been a bane for RWAs for a decade. In the last five years, the Kalkaji main road till Hansraj Sethi Marg has seen unprecedented encroachment—from pop-up restaurants to movable shops. “The bare minimum for an MP or MLA should be walkability. But they don’t care.

Walkability doesn’t get them votes,” says Abhijit Sinha, retired journalist, whose constituency Greater Kailash has a woman MLA, BJP’s Shikha Roy.

What matters is having all councillors, MPs, and MLAs from the same party—not their gender, claim two RWA chiefs. Across jhuggis and RWAs, the most beloved tenure is of Subhash Chopra as MLA, and councillors Khavinder Singh Captain and Virendra Kasana—all from the same party, with no one to interrupt them as the same party ruled the city and the country. 

“See, Atishi may want to do something, but she doesn’t have the same power as when she was the CM,” says Awasthi. He explains even the BJP has internal competition. “When you go with a complaint—water, electricity, roads—whether man or woman, they remind you this ward didn’t vote for them, so this is the consequence.” On Saroj’s claim of women being easier to deal with, Awasthi has mixed feelings. “Atishi used to be available till AAP was in power, not anymore.” Three RWAs agree Atishi is never available. Two jhuggi groups claim the same. Awasthi and two other RWA chiefs also recall the access they enjoyed before 2012. MLAs used to ask the constituents what is needed, starting from Kalkaji’s first MLA Purnima Sethi in 1993. 

Nizamuddin, a scrap seller in yet another JJ colony in Kalkaji, concurs. “On work, gender is irrelevant.” Though he believes women candidates conduct themselves better.

This article is part of the magazine issue dated May 11, 2026, called 'Khela Hobe? ' about Assembly Elections 2026 and how West Bengal may prove to be the toughest battleground for the Bharatiya Janata Party.