Rekha Gupta: From student leader to Delhi CM

Rekha Gupta beat her AAP rival by over 29,0000 votes, and, as a first-time MLA, has now been propelled to the Delhi CM’s post

A Daulat Ram College student who joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in 1992, going on to become the Delhi University Students’ Union general secretary in 1995, and the body’s president in 1996, Rekha Gupta cut her teeth in student politics in the national capital.

BJP nominated its MLA Rekha Gupta for the CM’s post. (Sanchit Khanna/HT)

Three decades later, after a journey that took her to the municipal corporation, and put her in several key roles in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Delhi unit, Gupta is about to take the reins as the fourth woman chief minister of Delhi.

She was born in 1974 in the Julana region of Jind district in Haryana. The family’s ancestral village is Nandgarh, and they moved to Delhi in 1976 when the father, Jai Bhagwan Jindal, became the branch manager of State Bank of India, Pitampura, from where she would later contest legislative assembly elections. Her mother, Urmila Jindal, was a homemaker.

She married Manish Gupta, an industrialist who deals in brass parts, in 1998. They have two children — a son who is in college and a daughter who is involved in the family business.

It was while pursuing her BCom from Daulat Ram College that she began her political journey by participating in various political and community events.

Indu Jain, who taught at Daulat Ram College from 1977 to 2020, said that Gupta was always dedicated to the causes she took up. “It is a very proud moment for us. I still remember that she was a very studious and a hardworking student. She was also very active in student politics at the time.”

Former student leaders, even from other political parties, remember her as being strongly committed to her ideology as a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fount of the BJP.

Former MLA Alka Lamba, who contested and lost the recent Delhi elections for the Congress from Kalkaji, remembers Gupta well from their student days.

“As DUSU members, we used to have serious ideological fights, but we also had a good understanding and consensus over several issues like women’s safety. Being women in politics was difficult 30 years ago, but we fought together. I would take an appointment with the then BJP CM Madanlal Khurana and then pull her along to ensure that our demands were met,” Lamba recalled.

Lamba was DUSU president in 1995 when Gupta was the general secretary. Lamba said that she was in minority since the other three DUSU council members, including Gupta, were from ABVP, but they always managed to come together on student-related issues.

After being elected as a councillor from north Pitampura in 2007, Gupta worked on developing basic facilities in the area such as libraries, parks and swimming pools. For the welfare of women and children, she launched initiatives such as the “Sumedha Yojana”, which supported economically weaker female students in pursuing higher education. During her previous tenure as councillor, she also held personality development programmes for first-time women councillors in which prominent senior leaders such as Sushma Swaraj and Krishna Tirath conducted sessions.

Former Delhi mayor Aarti Mehra of the BJP said that as chairperson of the women and child committee of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), Gupta was always proactive and came up with several new ideas and initiatives. “She is a great choice for CM — she has always actively worked for the welfare of women. I remember she wanted us to celebrate Teej at MCD and sheepishly said that it will need some budget. I said that if she continued to work hard, I would ensure that there is a budget for the same,” Mehra said.

In 2009, Gupta became the general secretary of the BJP Delhi state women’s unit and was named as a member of the BJP national executive in 2010. She was also the general secretary of the Delhi BJP in 2014 and an executive member of the BJP’s national Mahila Morcha in 2019. She was later elevated to national vice-president of the women’s wing and made in-charge of the party’s women’s wing in Uttar Pradesh.

Gupta was elected as an MCD councillor for a third time in 2022 from the Shalimar Bagh-B ward, and lost a close mayoral election to Shelly Oberoi of the Aam Aadmi Party. In the civic body, Gupta raised issues related to traders, industries and taxations, the Leader of Opposition in the House, Raja Iqbal Singh said. “Being a third-term councillor, she has vast experience of how the city functions. She is a very decent but also aggressive lady who has been working with the RSS since childhood,” Singh said.

Gupta contested legislative elections from the Shalimar Bagh constituency in 2015 and 2020 but lost to the AAP’s Bandana Kumari in two wave elections in favour of Arvind Kejriwal’s party. This time, however, she finally beat Kumari by over 29,0000 votes, and, as a first-time MLA, has now been propelled to the top job.

“I thank the party leadership, our big brother PM Modi, Amit Shah ji and the entire party leadership for expressing their faith in Rekha ji,” her husband Manish Gupta said. “There were much senior people but still they have given a very big responsibility to a woman leader and expressed their trust in her. All workers have got together here and we will together do the best for Delhi.”