All the waters of the Yamuna might be hard put to wash the stains of some of the past actions and remarks of Delhi’s new BJP chief minister. And not just because the water is polluted.

Videos circulating on social media purportedly show Rekha Gupta ripping the mic off a podium, calling for JNU to be shut down and making posts about an opponent that are being compared to the remarks that have landed YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia in trouble.

After she was sworn in at the Ramlila Maidan on Thursday, Gupta's first public act was to worship on the banks of the Yamuna at sunset along with her cabinet colleagues.

Cleaning up the river is one of the BJP’s promises. Machines deployed by Delhi lieutenant governor V.K. Saxena have been skimming trash off the river since Sunday.

Gupta was elected for the top job by her legislative party on Wednesday night and comes in with an impressive resumé. She was president of the Delhi University students’ union in 1996, rose to be a three-time municipal councillor, and defeated AAP stalwart Bandana Kumari in the recent Assembly polls. She is also the only woman among the BJP’s serving chief ministers.

But social media has a long memory.

A video from 2023 of a ruckus by BJP councillors shows a person resembling Gupta dismantling a podium, ripping the mic off it and hitting it repeatedly against furniture till it gets smashed to pieces.

Gupta had lost a mayoral election to the AAP’s Shelly Oberoi on that day, and her party councillors were protesting militantly against AAP councillors carrying their mobile phones into the polling stations — ostensibly violating the secrecy of their ballots.

An undated video purportedly shows Gupta mouthing some of the staple WhatsApp untruths about Jawaharlal Nehru University — the alma mater of two BJP Union ministers — accusing its students of moral turpitude and holding on to their hostel seats even after turning 50.

“Such a university that does dirty and treacherous things should not exist in Delhi or this country. It should be shut immediately,” she appears to say.

Besides these videos, several screenshots of X posts — purportedly from Gupta’s account — have been widely shared by Opposition leaders. These posts make offensive references to AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal’s mother. They could not be found on X when this report was filed.

Trinamool MP Sagarika Ghose commented: “Disturbing reports on social media on the new Delhi Chief Minister @gupta_rekha’s past abusive language and rowdyism. What a far cry from the hard working & gracious Sheila Dixit and the articulate parliamentarian Sushma Swaraj. But this is the ‘new’ @BJP4India where vicious abuse and vitriol have been normalised.”

Those sworn in with Gupta, in order of seniority, were Parvesh Sahib Singh, Ashish Sood, ManjinderSingh Sirsa, Kapil Mishra, Ravinder Indraj Singh, and Pankaj Singh.

Parvesh, son of former BJP chief minister Sahib Singh Verma, was censured by the Election Commission during the previous Assembly elections of 2020 for making incendiary remarks about the Shaheen Bagh protesters.

Mishra, a former AAP minister, made a speech immediately before the communal riots that followed the 2020 polls. The Delhi Minorities Commission found the speech to be a provocation for the riots.

Police later told Delhi High Court that they had found no evidence against Mishra, a video of whose speech was played in the courtroom for the force’s benefit.

Mishra is set to get back the culture department that he held until 2017 when he was in the AAP. At the time, he had taken on Right-wing goons who had defaced Urdu poetry that the Delhi government had commissioned to be painted on walls.

Sirsa is an import from the Shiromani Akali Dal.