NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta on Saturday likened her relationship with Parvesh Verma, her colleague in the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Delhi cabinet, to the bond between a sister and a brother.
Between her and Verma, ‘it doesn’t matter’ who held the chief minister’s chair, Gupta remarked.
“In Indian society, the elder sister is often entrusted with responsibility first. The sister is now the chief minister, while the brother is serving as a minister,” Gupta said, according to news agency PTI. She was speaking on the occasion of former chief minister Sahib Singh Verma‘s 82nd birth anniversary, at his memorial in Delhi’s Mundka.
Parvesh Verma is Sahib Singh Verma’s son.
“We will work together like a brother and sister to carry forward the unfinished work of Sahib Singh Verma,” Gupta stated, describing the late leader as a ‘guiding force’ in everyone’s life, including her own.
She also recalled how Sahib Singh Verma, as CM of Delhi, had telephoned to congratulate her upon becoming the leader of the Delhi University Students Union.
After the BJP won last month’s assembly election in the national capital, ousting the Aam Aadmi Party from office and forming its first government here since 1998, Parvesh Verma was considered a leading candidate for the CM’s post. The ex-Lok Sabha MP took on and defeated AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal from the latter’s New Delhi constituency.
However, the saffron party eventually picked Gupta to lead the new government. This made her the fourth woman chief minister of Delhi after BJP’s Sushma Swaraj, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress, and AAP’s Atishi.
Born on March 15, 1943, in the Mundka village, Sahib Singh Verma administered Delhi as its fourth CM from February 27, 1996, to October 12, 1998.
He passed away on June 30, 2007, aged 64.
