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.
Rekha 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.
Verma was sworn in second, after Tekha 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.