NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s ruling Hindu nationalist party on Wednesday named a woman as the top government official in the state of New Delhi, which includes the country’s capital, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi moves to consolidate his party’s hold there after winning the local election.
Former party student leader Rekha Gupta, 50, was named New Delhi chief minister, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad announced.
The party won the most seats in the high-stakes New Delhi polls earlier this month for the first time in 27 years. With 48 seats in the 70-member local assembly, Bharatiya Janata Party ousted the Aam Aadmi Party, which won 22 seats.
Gupta thanked the party and said she would work hard to meet the challenges ahead. She faces significant tasks in tackling air and river pollution and poor infrastructure in the Indian capital. Before elections, her party had offered to revamp government schools, give free health services, free electricity, and a monthly stipend of over 2,500 rupees ($29) to poor women in Delhi.
Gupta is the fourth female chief minister in Delhi, but it is still rare for Indian political parties to name women to top positions. The only other woman who is chief minister of a state currently is West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee, of the All India Trinamool Congress party.
A law for India’s legislatures to have 33% female membership is expected to be implemented by 2029. Women hold about 14% of parliamentary seats now, India’s highest proportion since independence but far below the global average of 26.5%.
Gupta, a former BJP general secretary, started out as a student leader at Delhi University in 1992. She is known for initiatives on the welfare of women and children, as well as support for impoverished female students.
The BJP has not run Delhi for over a quarter of a century. It yielded power to the Congress party that ruled Delhi from 1998 to 2013, until the AAP burst onto the scene on an anti-corruption platform.
The party’s victory was a boost for the BJP after it failed to secure a majority on its own in last year’s national election but formed the government with coalition partners. It gained some lost ground by winning three state elections in northern Haryana and Delhi and western Maharashtra.
Ahead of the election earlier this month, the BJP slashed income taxes on the salaried middle class, one of its key voting blocs, in the federal budget.
The AAP suffered a major setback when its founder and leader Arvind Kejriwal was arrested last year along with two other party officials on charges of receiving bribes from a liquor distributor. They have denied the accusation, claiming it was a part of a political conspiracy.
Kejriwal and the two others were later released on bail by the Supreme Court and Kejriwal subsequently stepped down as Delhi chief minister.
