As part of Chief Minister Rekha Gupta’s new government, Parvesh Verma, Kapil Sharma, and four other recently elected BJP MLAs were also sworn in.
New Delhi: In a lavish oath-taking ceremony held at Ramlila Maidan in the capital on Thursday afternoon, Rekha Gupta of the Bharatiya Janata Party was sworn in as Delhi’s chief minister.
Ms. Gupta becomes the second female leader and fourth Delhi chief minister of the BJP. She is also Delhi’s fourth female chief minister, after her immediate predecessor, Atishi of the AAP, Sushma Swaraj of the BJP, and Sheila Dikshit of the Congress.
Parvesh Verma, who gained the nickname “giant-killer” after defeating AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal in the New Delhi seat and was regarded as a strong candidate for the Chief Minister’s seat, was one of six members of her party who were elected into the government.
Following Ms. Gupta, who took her oath in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and BJP President JP Nadda, as well as chief ministers from states controlled by the party and its allies, including N Chandrababu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Verma was sworn in second.
Members of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance and senior federal cabinet members Rajnath Singh and Hardeep Singh Puri also made an appearance.
Vijender Gupta, a former Leader of the Opposition, has also been nominated by the BJP to be the new Speaker of the Delhi Assembly. Ten years after being forcibly removed from the Assembly by marshals following a confrontation with colleagues from the then-governing AAP, Mr. Gupta is back.
The new cabinet, which has space for three additional ministers, was also sworn in by Kapil Sharma, Manjinder Sirsa, Ashish Sood, Pankaj Kumar Singh, and Ravinder Indraj Singh.
A surprise choice for the top position was Ms. Gupta, a first-time Member of Parliament from Shalimar Bagh, a seat she took away from Bandana Kumari of the AAP, who had held it since 2013.
Her appointment was confirmed late Wednesday following talks with the party’s new MLAs and the BJP’s Parliamentary Board, which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The party discussed and waited for Mr. Modi to return from his trip to France and the United States, which caused the meetings to be postponed by over two weeks following the poll results.
“Taking Delhi to new heights” is what Ms. Gupta stands for, and she pledged to work with “full honesty, integrity and dedication for the welfare, empowerment and overall development of every citizen of Delhi” in her first statements following her nomination as chief minister.
