Rekha Gupta took oath as the Chief Minister of Delhi. Lt. Governor VK Saxena administered the oath at the swearing-in ceremony held at Ramlila Maidan. Parvesh Verma was also sworn in as the Deputy Chief Minister. Ashish Sood, Pankaj Singh, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Kapil Mishra and Ravindra Inderj Singh also took oath along with Rekha.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Ministers Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, JP Nadda, Chief Ministers and Deputy Chief Ministers from BJP-ruled states, and prominent NDA leaders attended the oath-taking ceremony.
The new Chief Minister was decided in a parliamentary board meeting chaired by the Prime Minister yesterday. In a meeting of the legislature party held at the party’s state headquarters in the presence of central observers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Om Prakash Dhankhar, Parvesh Verma proposed Rekha Gupta’s name for the post of Chief Minister. The proposal was passed unanimously. Ravi Shankar Prasad formally announced that Rekha Gupta had been elected as the leader. Rekha Gupta thanked everyone. Although several names were considered for the post of Chief Minister, three factors – women, OBCs and representatives of the middle class – supported Rekha Gupta.
Rekha is the fourth woman to become the Chief Minister of Delhi. Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress and Atishi of the Aam Aadmi Party are the previous women to have ruled the national capital. Rekha started her political career from Delhi University. She has served as the student union president and general secretary at the university. She has served as a municipal councilor three times and the mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation. Rekha Gupta won from Shalimar Bagh by a margin of 29,000 votes, defeating Aam Aadmi Party’s Bandana Kumari and Congress’s Praveen Kumar Jain.
