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Delhi chief minister-designate Rekha Gupta, 6 ministers to be sworn in today
Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, Ashish Sood, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Ravinder Indraj Singh, Kapil Mishra, and Pankaj Singh will be induced into Gupta’s Cabinet
Chief minister-designate Rekha Gupta, 50, a first-time lawmaker who was picked for Delhi’s top job on Wednesday, will take oath along with six ministers at Ramlila Maidan on Thursday, 12 days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was voted back to power in the Capital after 27 years.
Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma, who defeated former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Ashish Sood, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, Ravinder Indraj Singh, Kapil Mishra, and Pankaj Singh will be induced into Gupta’s Cabinet, said a Union home ministry’s gazette notification.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, and chief ministers from 20 states are expected to be among those who will attend the swearing-in ceremony. An official said the chief secretary will receive Gupta and six lawmakers being sworn in at the Ramlila Maidan around 12.10pm.
The BJP has invited auto drivers, sanitation workers, slum dwellers, and roadside vendors for the ceremony acknowledging their support in the assembly elections. The BJP swept back to power on February 8 winning 48 seats out of the 70. The Aam Aadmi Party was reduced to 22 seats.
Gupta, who rose through the ranks as a student leader, is a three-time councillor. She met lieutenant governor VK Saxena to stake claim to form the government after BJP legislators picked her as the chief minister.
Gupta joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of BJP’s ideological fount Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in the 1990s. She will become the fourth woman chief minister of Delhi after Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dikshit, and Atishi.
Gupta will be the second BJP woman chief minister since Anandiben Patel took Gujarat’s top political post in 2014. Mamata Banerjee is the only other woman chief minister in the country.
