Rekha Gupta named Delhi CM; to be only woman CM across BJP-ruled states

In a decision to affirm the commitment of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to the empowerment and welfare of women, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a constituent of the bloc, on Wednesday picked Rekha Gupta, a first-term legislator, as Delhi’s next chief minister. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah congratulated Gupta. The Gupta-led Delhi government needs to work in close coordination with the Ministry of Home Affairs. 

Gupta, 50, slated to take the oath of office, along with her council of ministers, at the Ramlila Ground on Thursday afternoon, will be the only woman to be chief minister in the 20 states and Union Territories (UTs) the NDA runs. 

 

The BJP’s legislature party elected Gupta as its leader in the Delhi Assembly at its meeting on Wednesday evening, 11 days after the party secured a majority in the Delhi Assembly polls.  

The BJP won 48 seats in the 70-member Assembly, the results of which were announced on February 8. 

The party has returned to power in Delhi after almost 27 years, having run a government from 1993 to 1998.  Also Read: Delhi CM oath ceremony LIVE   

A key task ahead of the Gupta-led Delhi government is to fulfil Modi’s poll promise that the party’s government in Delhi will deposit the first instalment of the Rs 2,500 monthly allowance to eligible women beneficiaries in the UT on the International Women’s Day on March 8. The BJP had also promised an allowance of Rs 21,000 to pregnant women. 

The BJP’s decision came after the party’s parliamentary board met at Modi’s residence in the morning, deputing senior leaders Ravi Shankar Prasad and Om Prakash Dhankhar as its observers for the meeting of the party’s legislators later in the evening.  At the meeting of the party’s elected MLAs, Parvesh Verma, who defeated Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal from the New Delhi seat; Satish Upadhyay; and Vijender Kumar proposed Gupta’s name, which was accepted unanimously. 

Gupta is a product of Delhi’s student politics. As a student of Delhi University’s Daulat Ram College, Gupta was active in the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the students’ union affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and president to the Delhi University Students’ Union in 1996-97. She had contested the Delhi Assembly polls in 2015 and 2020 from Shalimar Bagh, losing to the AAP’s Bandana Kumari on both occasions. She won the 2025 Assembly polls from the seat, defeating Kumari by 29,595 votes. She has been a three-term councillor, and had lost the election to the post of Delhi’s mayor to the AAP’s Shelly Oberoi in 2023. 

Gupta is one of the four women who won this year on the BJP ticket.  

Incidentally, Parvesh’s father, Sahib Singh Verma, won the Shalimar Bagh seat in 1993, and succeeded Madan Lal Khurana as Delhi chief minister in February 1996.  

Gupta later met Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena at Raj Niwas to stake a claim in forming a BJP-led government in Delhi. She will be the fourth woman chief minister of Delhi — after Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dikshit, and Atishi. 

The only woman chief minister in the country is West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee. The BJP has two women deputy chief ministers — Diya Kumari in Rajasthan and Pravati Parida in Odisha. 

While Gupta is a first-term legislator, she has been a councillor of Delhi’s civic body, and also mayor of the erstwhile South Delhi Municipal Corporation. She was born in Haryana, and moved to Delhi when her father, a bank officer, was transferred to the city. 

Apart from her undergraduate degree from Delhi University, Gupta has an LLB from Chaudhary Charan Singh University-affiliated law college in Ghaziabad, and has described her profession as an advocate in her election affidavit. Her husband runs a life insurance agency. 

Sources said Gupta had the support of the RSS, which had actively participated in the Delhi Assembly poll campaign to help the BJP win.