New Delhi: It took the BJP 19 years, since its formation in 1980, to emerge as a political party to reckon with. This happened in 1999, when Atal Behari Vajpayee took charge of the first non-Congress government in India that would last a full term of five years.
However, it took the BJP 27 long years to set its house in order in Delhi. After winning the people’s mandate in a convincing manner in the recent high-profile Delhi Assembly elections, the party is in no mood to let things slip. No wonder, the BJP chose someone like first-time MLA Rekha Gupta as chief minister, instead of banking on heavyweights like Parvesh Verma, Ashish Sood or Virender Gupta.
For years now, the BJP’s Delhi unit has been ridden by factionalism, infighting and controversy. The controversies were triggered by unsolicited social media posts and comments by a section of party leaders. So much so that even after the 2025 victory earlier this month, a section within the BJP advocated Nupur Sharma as the CM face. This, despite the fact that Nupur didn’t contest the Assembly polls and had been suspended by the party in 2022 following her controversial comments about Prophet Muhammad, leading to nationwide furore. The BJP’s top leadership put its foot down on the Nupur proposal.
Need for a non-controversial CM face
Over the last couple of years, the BJP took up cudgels against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), primarily on the issue of corruption. Despite claims by the likes of Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia that they had been framed, Delhi voters seem to have taken the issues seriously. No wonder, both Kejriwal and Sisodia lost from their respective constituencies. The BJP had to follow this up with a clean face as CM, and there was none better than Rekha Gupta.
Though lesser known around the country in comparison to some of her party colleagues, Rekha is a popular face in Delhi, having won the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) elections thrice and served as mayor of the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC). She has not been linked to any major controversy in her nearly 30-year political career, since joining student politics in 1993.
Delhites comfortable with a woman CM
The Delhi population wears a largely cosmopolitan look and seems to favour women in power. The BJP’s Sushma Swaraj was the first woman chief minister of Delhi, though she was in the ‘hot seat’ for only a few months in 1998 before her party lost the polls and Congress formed the government with a resounding majority. The Congress’ natural choice as CM was Sheila Dixit, who continued to hold the position for the next fifteen years, setting a record.
The AAP burst onto the scene with Kejriwal at the helm in 2015, lasting two terms. The last few months were devastating for the party, though, with Kejriwal being forced to relinquish charge and hand over the reins to Atishi. It again became evident that the Delhites favour women as leaders when Atishi succeeded in retaining her Kalkaji seat, despite her party dropping from 67 seats in the 2015 election to 22 this time around. Hence, a woman as the chief minister of Delhi was a natural choice and Rekha fitted the bill.
Lessons from the UP debacle
The BJP came into being in 1980 after the Janata Party forbade its leaders from being members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The old Jan Sanghis quit the Janata Party and created the BJP. Though RSS maintains that it has nothing to do with politics, it is clear that the organisation’s ideology has a major role in how the BJP functions.
This became clear in the Lok Sabha polls of 2024 when the BJP fared miserably in Uttar Pradesh, despite construction the new Ram Mandir at Ayodhya a few months earlier and the perceived Narendra Modi wave. Even after elections were announced, a section of top BJP leaders had said that the party has become large enough to step out of RSS’ shadow.
BJP seems to have taken lessons from the embarrassment in UP and quietly crept back into the shadows of the RSS. Though the Sangh would vehemently deny this, Rekha would be its first choice as the CM of Delhi. She had spent her first years in politics with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), after all.
