A surprise ceases to surprise when it becomes a repetitive act. Few would have predicted that Rekha Gupta will become the Bharatiya Janata Party’s pick for Delhi chief minister. But few would have ruled out the possibility of the leadership looking beyond the list of usual suspects. Conjuring surprise chief ministerial choices has become so routine to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah house style that it is no longer a surprise to see dark horses leading the parade. Vishnu Deo Sai for Raman Singh in Chhattisgarh, Bhajan Lal Sharma for Vasundhara Raje Scindia in Rajasthan, Mohan Yadav for Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and now comes Rekha Gupta, a first-time entrant to the Delhi assembly, superimposed on Parvesh Verma, widely perceived as ‘natural choice’ for the top job.
A former member of the Lok Sabha, Mr Verma’s credentials go beyond being the son of the late Sahib Singh Verma, one-time party strongman of the Delhi region. In the elections just done, Mr Verma defeated the Aam Aadmi Party boss and former chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal. If he fancied his chances, he had good reason. But Mr Verma lost out for the very reasons that bolstered his candidacy — he is well-seeded in the local party hierarchy and enjoys heft that he can lay personal claim to. The duopoly of Mr Modi and Mr Shah is clearly ill-disposed — even unkind — towards those who can hold their own. Over time, they have systematically uprooted parallel centres of power and popularity and promoted little-known loyalists whose singular worth is that they are political lightweights — utterly loyal and easily dispensable. It must be said that Mr Modi and Mr Shah have cast away satraps with a fair measure of success and created a power grid that owes its existence to them. The one striking exception — and a critical one — is Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh. He is known not to enjoy too much favour with the masters in Delhi, but he has held out, even in the aftermath of the Lok Sabha debacle in the summer of 2024. Mr Adityanath has brandished his high-voltage Hindutva with astonishing brazenness. It not only makes him tough to dislodge but it is also designed to pitch him as the populist Hindutva heir to Mr Modi. In being who he is, Mr Adityanath also underlines why the Rekha Guptas, beholden and bereft of any threat, are essential to the leadership.