NEW DELHI: The wrangling and jostling for power within the BJP for two weeks since the Feb 5 Delhi elections gave way on Wednesday to the anointing of the first woman chief minister from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, symbolically underscoring a hundred years of India’s neo-fascist organisation being celebrated this year.

Ironically, the Communist Party of India was also founded in 1925 in Kanpur. BJP’s first woman chief minister for Delhi was the late Sushma Swaraj who had no RSS connections. But Rekha Gupta, who follows Swaraj, Sheila Dixit (Congress) and Atishi (Aam Aadmi Party) as the fourth woman to head the Delhi government cut her teeth with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of RSS.

Ms Gupta, 50, is a former president of the Delhi University’s students’ union. In her first post on X after her name was announced, Ms Gupta worte: “I thank the BJP’s national leadership and the legislature party. #viksitdelhi.”

Ms Gupta started her journey in student politics, getting elected Delhi University Students’ Union president in 1996-97. She subsequently served as the secretary of the Bharatiya Janta Yuva Morcha’s Delhi unit and as the outfit’s national secretary.

A lawyer by profession, she entered electoral politics in 2007 when she won the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections from North Pitampura ward. She was reelected in 2012 from the same ward and in 2022 won from the Shalimar Bagh ward. Ms Gupta has also served as the general secretary of the Delhi BJP’s Mahila Morcha and a member of the BJP National Executive.

As a councillor, Ms Gupta set up facilities such as swimming pools, gyms, libraries, and community halls in her area. She also initiated health check-up camps for women and children and organised awareness campaigns against child labour, according to party insiders.

She was the BJP’s pick for the mayoral polls against AAP’s Shelly Oberoi but lost. In the assembly elections, she defeated AAP’s three-time MLA Bandana Kumari. Gupta was among the eight MCD councillors elected to the assembly.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2025