India's newest political star, Arvind Kejriwal, left his job as a tax official in 2001, to embark on a career as an anti-corruption campaigner that would lead to national fame.

After leaving government service he campaigned to bring in India's Right to Information Act in 2005, which earned him the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

A few years later, he teamed up activist Anna Hazare to demand the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill, which creates a national ombudsman to investigate venality among elected representatives and bureaucrats.

Though their demands went unheeded and their relationship ultimately soured, the campaign planted Mr Kejriwal onto the national stage.

In November 2012, he launched the Aam Aadmi Party, despite Anna's advice to remain an apolitical movement.

Through the campaign for his Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, the father-of-two campaigned with no security - a status symbol for politicians in the capital.

His supporters wielded the party symbol, the broom, and wore white caps. "The broom symbolises a clean sweep of India's rotten politics; the white Gandhi cap connects India to an era "when we had a politics of honesty and a politics of public service," he said in an interview last month.

Using tactics popularised by US President Barack Obama, the party raised nearly 20 crores ($3.2 million) through small donations - with supporters' names listed on the website.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra handed Mr Kejriwal his most memorable nickname in an outburst earlier this year, in which he branded AAP "mango people in a banana republic".