The seasoned, affable, BJP leader holding the fort successfully for the party in Delhi Assembly, municipal corporation, as head of the State unit free from any controversies, Vijender Gupta, was named as Speaker of the new Vidhan Sabha on Thursday. Vijender will preside from the same chair which on several occasions had got him marshalled out of the proceedings of the Assembly under the chief ministership of AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal.
Vijender won in 2015 and 2020 from Rohini constituency even as Kejriwal’s wave swept Delhi assembly polls. Incidentally, Kejriwal and erstwhile speaker Ram Niwas Goel are no longer members of the new assembly.
As soon as Vijender was named as Speaker dramatic visuals of him being marshalled or dragged out of the Delhi Assembly went viral. He was previously also the leader of Opposition. Ten years ago, he was marshalled out of the Delhi Assembly amid much fury over allegedly derogatory remarks by a party colleague, OP Sharma, against then-AAP MLA Alka Lamba.Visuals from within the Assembly showed Vijender Gupta, dressed in a pristine white kurta-pyjama set - being lifted, shouting and twisting, by half-a-dozen marshals. The BJP leader even held tightly onto the furniture, fighting and resisting all the way out the exit.
Vijender return is likely spell more trouble for a battered AAP. After his election win last week, he promised that 14 pending reports on the Delhi government by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India would be tabled in the House.
The reports, he claimed, would “expose how the AAP misled the people of Delhi with false promises while engaging in financial irregularities amounting to crores”. Vijender also then hit out at the AAP, declaring the party had blocked BJP MLAs’ efforts to table these CAG reports.
Sources earlier said he was even on a shortlist for the Chief Minister’s post, something that eventually went to Rekha Gupta.
Gupta, who belongs to the Baniya community, won the Rohini Assembly seat for a third consecutive time, defeating AAP’s Pradeep Mittal by over 37,000 votes. The veteran BJP leader has also served as the president of the Delhi BJP unit.
Born on August 14, 1963, he graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce. He cut his teeth in politics in 1980 with the Janata Vidyarthi Morcha and later became president of BJP’s youth wing in 1995.
Gupta first tasted electoral success in 1997 when he became a councillor in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). However, he faced defeat in his first Lok Sabha contest, losing to Congress’s Kapil Sibal in 2009 from Chandni Chowk. Four years later, he was defeated by Arvind Kejriwal in the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections.
In view of the majority enjoyed by the BJP in the Assembly, Gupta’s elevation to Speaker’s post is a foregone conclusion. “The CAG reports will be tabled in the House first of all after I take charge of the Assembly Speaker. It is my duty to bring the reports before the public and I will fulfil it,” he said.
In a veiled attack on AAP, Gupta said the Assembly is a temple of democracy whose sanctity must be maintained by all. “I pray to God for good senses to prevail among those who ran the Assembly in an anarchic manner in the last year by violating the rules and regulations,” he said, expecting the opposition AAP to become a part of healthy discussion in the House.