Six MLAs along with Gupta to take oath of office at Ramlila Ground
New Delhi:Delhi’s long wait for its new chief minister ended on Wednesday evening, with the BJP naming first-time legislator Rekha Gupta for the top post. She, along with her six Cabinet colleagues, will take the oath of office on Thursday at the historic Ramlila Ground.
Gupta will succeed Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi as the BJP swerved to power in Delhi after a hiatus of over 26 years by sweeping the February 5 Assembly polls. This newspaper was the first to report that Delhi will get a woman chief minister.
Gupta, who will be the lone woman chief minister among the 14 states currently ruled by the BJP, had won the recent Delhi polls from the Shalimar Bagh Assembly constituency.
The choice of the chief ministerial candidate is a clear indicator that the BJP aims to hold sway over this crucial votebank in the national capital. This is also in line with the extraordinary voter turnout of women in the Delhi polls, which was higher than men since the first Assembly elections in 1993.
To woo the women voters, the BJP had pitched a monthly financial assistance of `2,500 against AAP’s `2,100 in the run-up to the recent Assembly polls.
The name of Gupta as the leader of the BJP’s legislative party was proposed by Parvesh Verma, Vijender Gupta and Satish Uphadyay and was seconded by nine other newly elected MLAs. Interestingly, the names of Verma, Vijender Gupta and Uphadyay were also doing the rounds for the top post.
Rekha Gupta has submitted a list of six legislators for the oath ceremony to Lieutenant-Governor V.K. Saxena. The L-G will send the list to the President for approval before administering them the oath of office on Thursday.
Expressing gratitude to the BJP leadership, Rekha Gupta posted on X, “I extend my gratitude to the BJP top leadership and the legislative party for appointing me as the Chief Minister of Delhi. I am fully prepared to take on this responsibility and work towards the development of Delhi.”
A seasoned BJP leader, Gupta has had a long political career, starting from her leadership in student politics. Currently serving as the national vice-president of the BJP’s women’s wing, the 50-year-old leader won the Shalimar Bagh (North-West) seat in the just concluded Delhi Assembly elections, securing 68,200 votes.
A lawyer by profession, Gupta’s political journey began as the president of the Delhi University Students’ Union from 1996 to 1997. She later turned to municipal politics, winning the Delhi municipal elections from Uttari Pitampura (Ward 54) in 2007 and successfully securing re-election in 2012 and 2022. The first-time MLA has also served as the chairperson of the education committee of the municipal corporation, further strengthening her administrative credentials.
The BJP will now be having its second woman chief minister in Delhi exactly 9,578 days after Sushma Swaraj had resigned from the post in 1998. Swaraj served as Delhi CM for just 52 days. She was brought in to replace then chief minister Sahib Singh Verma before the state polls as Delhi had been rocked by the skyrocketing prices of onions. In fact, Verma too had replaced then chief minister Madan Lal Khurana, who had resigned less than 30 months after assuming power following allegations of corruption against him in the Jain hawala case.
The meeting of the freshly elected BJP legislators at the party’s Delhi headquarters at 14 Pt Pant Marg was held in the presence of the BJP’s central observers — Lok Sabha MP Ravi Shankar Prasad and national secretary Om Prakash Dhankar.
The central observers first held separate meetings with some of the newly elected MLAs before the legislative party elected Gupta as its leader. Besides the new MLAs, the party’s local MPs – Manoj Tiwari, Bansuri Swaraj and Ramvir Singh Bhiduri — were also present in the meeting.
Ahead of the legislative meeting, the BJP members started celebrations at the party office. Many probable CM candidates were garlanded and some party workers even exchanged sweets with the new legislators. The meeting began with the party legislators chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, “Vande Matram” and “Jai Shri Ram”. “Modi Modi” chants also reverberated at the meeting.
