New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has picked first-time MLA and three-term former councillor Rekha Gupta as its chief minister in Delhi, ending days of speculation after the party’s victory in the recently concluded Assembly polls.
Upon assuming office Thursday, Gupta (50) will become Delhi’s fourth woman chief minister after Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dikshit and Atishi.
Two central observers from the BJP, Ravi Shankar Prasad and O.P. Dhankar, were present during the Delhi BJP legislative party meeting where Gupta’s name was proposed and seconded by MLAs. Senior BJP leaders along with Gupta later met Delhi L-G V.K. Saxena to stake claim to form the government. Much before Gupta’s name was formally announced, her family members had started distributing sweets in anticipation of good news.
She will take oath at the Ramlila Maidan Thursday, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief ministers of 19 NDA-ruled states.
A lawyer by profession, Gupta hails from the Baniya community.
Gupta was elected to the municipal council from Pitampura North ward thrice. She is currently national vice-president of BJP’s Mahila Morcha. According to a Delhi BJP leader, Gupta was on the ground when the party’s state leadership was working on the Laadli Behna scheme in Madhya Pradesh. Schemes centred around women was also one of the key poll promises of the BJP in the run-up to the Delhi Assembly elections.
It announced Rs 2,500 per month to eligible women, one-time financial assistance of Rs 21,000 for pregnant women and higher old-age assistance.
Gupta won the Assembly elections from Shalimar Bagh with 68,200 votes, ahead of her nearest rival Bandana Kumari of the AAP who secured 38,605 votes.
Gupta was in charge of the women’s wing of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and played a crucial role in reaching out to women voters ahead of elections, said another BJP leader who did not wish to be named. Many leaders within the BJP described her as an ‘excellent orator’ who has served on ‘almost all organisational posts’.
A first-time MLA, she had unsuccessfully contested Delhi Assembly elections twice. In 2022, when she was elected a councillor the party also named her its mayoral candidate against Shelly Oberoi of the AAP.
Gupta started her political journey with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). She became president of Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) in the year 1996-1997, and was first elected as a councilor from Pitampura North in 2007.
Unlike the past when the BJP declared chief ministerial candidates in Delhi prior to voting day, the party went to the polls this time without projecting any CM face, banking solely on the appeal of PM Modi. In previous Assembly elections, the party had named Kiran Bedi and former Union minister Harsh Vardhan as its chief ministerial candidates.
This time it managed to stage a comeback in Delhi after 27 years, winning 48 of Delhi’s 70 Assembly seats and reducing the AAP to a mere 22 seats. Modi set the tone for BJP’s campaign as he coined the term ‘aapda (disaster)’ for AAP, citing allegations of “corruption” and “lack of vision”. The election also saw the return of ‘Modi ki guarantee’ on posters.
In parliamentary elections, BJP has had a successful run in Delhi so far, winning all of the Capital’s seven Lok Sabha seats in 2014, 2019 and 2024.
Under attack over arrests of its top leaders, including former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on corruption charges, the AAP was quick to launch its campaign and even released its candidate list ahead of both BJP and Congress, giving its MLA hopefuls an early advantage.
It also dropped 20 sitting MLAs, including prominent figures like former Delhi convenor Dilip Pandey, and reshuffled candidates in several other seats, including former Deputy CM Manish Sisodia. It maintained that these decisions were based purely on “hard work” and “performance”. The BJP also focused on corruption as one of its major poll planks as it targeted Kejriwal for building a “sheesh mahal”. The reference was to the supposedly opulent renovation of the official bungalow Kejriwal occupied as Delhi chief minister.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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