NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s loyalist and Delhi’s new chief minister, Rekha Gupta, was sworn in on Thursday, as India’s ruling party regained power in the national capital region after a 27-year gap.
The national vice president of the BJP’s women’s wing, Gupta had previously served as the party’s general secretary in Delhi.
She is the fourth woman to hold the office of Delhi’s chief minister.
“We will empower Delhi through modern infrastructure, excellent healthcare services, excellent education and new employment opportunities,” she said upon inauguration.
“Today, I took oath as the chief minister with the resolve to develop Delhi under the guidance of Honorable Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is not just a responsibility but an opportunity to fulfill the aspirations of the people of Delhi.”
A first-time legislator, Gupta won the capital’s Shalimar Bagh Assembly constituency in February’s assembly elections.
Modi’s party won 48 of the 70 assembly seats — over twice more than the opposition Aam Aadmi Party of the previous chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, Modi’s fierce critic.
The win was a boost for the Hindu-nationalist leader after last year’s general election saw him lose his parliamentary majority.
The BJP’s victory came on the promise of cleaning the capital’s Yamuna River, one of the most polluted waterways in the world. The Yamuna is particularly polluted downstream of New Delhi, which dumps about 60 percent of its waste into the river. At the same time, the river provides more than half of the Indian capital’s water.
Another promise was to tackle Delhi’s air pollution, which during winters soars to hazardous levels. In December, it was 35 times over the safe limit set by the World Health Organization, leaving residents complaining of breathing problems.
The toxic smog, which seasonally chokes the city for months, is caused by several factors, including construction activities, vehicle emissions, industrial pollutants and the seasonal burning of crop residue in neighboring states.
“The two biggest issues in Delhi are the river and the air. And I don’t see how they can do it,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst and the author of Modi’s biography “Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.”
While the farmers around Delhi have regularly been blamed for the pollution, the region’s air quality remained bad in February, even as there was no burning of paddy stubble to clear the soil for the next crops.
“So why is Delhi still so polluted at the moment? ... Automobile pollution is possibly one of the biggest things, but would the Indian government be doing anything to reduce the numbers of vehicles which have been sold in Delhi and the National Capital Region? No, it will not because it involves a lot of further financial matters,” Mukhopadhyay told Arab News.
Another promise was monthly payments of 2,500 Indian rupees ($28) to poor women, a one-time payment of 21,000 rupees to every pregnant woman, subsidized cooking gas, a monthly pension of 2,500 rupees for the elderly, and 15,000 rupees for youth preparing for competitive exams.
“Fiscally it is going to be a big challenge. I do not know from where they will provide this money,” Mukhopadhyay said.
“It is going to be very difficult, but they will have to do it otherwise within three months, there will be a backlash against the BJP. It is going to be fiscally mind-blowing.”
