NEW DELHI, Feb 20 (Agencies):The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Rekha Gupta was sworn in Thursday afternoon as Chief Minister of Delhi in a grand oath-taking ceremony at the city’s Ramlila Maidan.
Ms Gupta becomes the BJP’s fourth Delhi Chief Minister and its second woman leader to hold the post. She is also the fourth woman Chief Minister of Delhi, following from the BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, the Congress’ Sheila Dikshit, and the AAP’s Atishi, her immediate predecessor.
Six of her party colleagues, including Parvesh Verma – who earned himself the ‘giant-killer’ moniker by defeating AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal for the New Delhi constituency, and was widely seen as a frontrunner for the Chief Minister’s chair – were inducted into the cabinet.
Mr Verma was sworn in second, after Ms Gupta, who took her oath with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP President JP Nadda looking on, as too were chief ministers from states ruled by the party and its allies, such as Andhra Pradesh’s N Chandrababu Naidu.
Also featuring prominently were senior members of the union cabinet, such as Rajnath Singh and Hardeep Singh Puri, and members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Kapil Sharma, Manjinder Sirsa, Ashish Sood, Pankaj Kumar Singh, and Ravinder Indraj Singh were also sworn in to the new cabinet, which has room for three more ministers.
The BJP has also nominated former Leader of the Opposition, Vijender Gupta, as the new Speaker of the Delhi Assembly. Mr Gupta returns to the Assembly a decade after he was physically evicted by marshals amid a row with counterparts from the then-ruling AAP.
Ms Gupta, a first-time MLA from Shalimar Bagh, a seat she wrested from the AAP’s Bandana Kumari, who had held it since 2013, was a surprise pick for the top post.
Confirmation of her appointment came late Wednesday after meetings of the BJP’s Parliamentary Board, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and of the party’s new MLAs.
The meetings had been delayed by nearly two weeks after the poll results, as the party deliberated and, also, waited for Mr Modi to return from his trip to France and the United States.
In her first remarks after being nominated as Chief Minister, Ms Gupta said she stands committed to “taking Delhi to new heights” and vowed to work with “full honesty, integrity and dedication for the welfare, empowerment and overall development of every citizen of Delhi”.
She also thanked the Prime Minister and the BJP’s top leadership for their faith.