NEW DELHI: From a student leader to the post of CM, Rekha Gupta has held several important positions during her nearly three-decade-long political journey but always maintained a low profile. This time too, she wasn’t among the front-runners for the coveted CM’s post after BJP upstaged AAP to win its first assembly election in 27 years. The 50-year-old’s election as leader of the legislative party came as a surprise even to many in her own party. She will take oath as the fourth woman CM of Delhi on Thursday at Ramlila Maidan on Thursday. Gupta was born in 1974 in Nandgarh village of Haryana’s Jind district. Her family moved to Delhi in 1976 where her father took up a job in the State Bank of India. As a student of Daulat Ram College, she joined Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. She was elected president of Delhi University Students’ Union in 1996. She is, therefore, the first DUSU office bearer to become CM of Delhi.
After college, she worked as a ground-level worker before the first big opportunity came her way in 2007. Gupta was nominated to contest the municipal election from the Uttari Pitampura ward. She won a comfortable victory. MCD was trifurcated ahead of the 2012 municipal polls, but that didn’t affect her political fortunes, winning a second time in a row as councillor in the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. According to her colleagues in the BJP, the party rewarded her for the feat by making her chairperson of the education committee. She did not disappoint, bringing about a few reforms in the system of the municipal schools. For one, Gupta made MCD students look as sharp as their friends studying in private schools in new uniforms. She also initiated the construction of pucca buildings for a few schools that were being run from tents. In the 2015 assembly polls, Gupta was fielded against AAP’s Bandana Kumari in Shalimar Bagh constituency. She lost those polls and when BJP decided not to renominate sitting councillors in the 2017 municipal polls, Gupta found herself out of electoral politics for a few years. In 2022, she was again elected as a municipal councillor in the re-unified MCD from Shalimar Bagh (B) ward. She was pitted against AAP’s Shelly Oberoi in the mayoral poll in 2023 but the numbers were stacked against her, resulting in her defeat. Keen to end its political exile in Delhi, BJP banked her again, fielding her in the assembly polls. This time Gupta didn’t disappoint the party. She avenged her 2015 loss and defeated AAP’s sitting MLA and her old rival, Kumari, by a huge margin of over 29,000 votes. Stay updated with breaking news, bank holidays and upcoming public holidays in march.
