In the Fog of Power: Rekha Gupta’s First Winter as Delhi Chief Minister

The winter of 2025 arrived in Delhi with its familiar cruelty. Smog pressed low over the city, schools shut abruptly, and health advisories slipped into daily routine—even as dense winter fog blurred mornings and delayed clarity. In moments like these, governance ceases to be an abstract contest of authority. It becomes visceral. The question citizens ask is no longer about jurisdiction or legacy, but about relief—who can make life marginally easier when the air itself feels hostile?

For Rekha Gupta, this winter marked a turning point. As the city edged into 2026, Gupta was no longer merely the subject of internal party skepticism or political gossip. She was being judged—daily and publicly—by the most unforgiving standard the capital knows. That this judgment is now taken seriously marks a quiet but consequential shift.

When Gupta was sworn in as Chief Minister in February 2025, disbelief dominated political and journalistic circles. Her elevation defied hierarchy and expectation, bypassing senior and more visible leaders within her own party. To many, her appointment appeared accidental—a compromise, a placeholder, an arrangement meant to hold until something more predictable emerged. The language was revealing: interim, low-profile, safe.

Ten months later, that framing has begun to erode.

The disappointment of those who lost the race for the top post has not disappeared; it has matured. Jealousies have settled into discretion, ambitions have gone quiet without vanishing, and a persistent narrative continues to shadow Gupta’s tenure: that Delhi’s Chief Minister governs within tight confines, constrained by an empowered Lieutenant Governor and central oversight. In this telling, survival depends less on assertion than on restraint—keeping one’s head down, one’s voice measured, and one’s errors minimal.

Yet politics does not always reward volume. Sometimes, it rewards adaptation.

When Endurance Was Not Enough

Gupta’s first year did not allow for gradual acclimatisation. It arrived compressed and adversarial. Institutional ambiguity ensured that authority was constantly questioned. Key administrative decisions—bureaucratic transfers, enforcement drives, public messaging—were scrutinised not just for effectiveness, but for authorship. The underlying question persisted: does the Chief Minister decide, or merely announce?

That ambiguity was reinforced when the Lieutenant Governor authorised major bureaucratic transfers and continued to take high-visibility positions on governance—a reminder that in Delhi, the administrative levers do not belong to the Chief Minister alone.

Opposition parties exploited this relentlessly. More quietly, the sharper pressure came from within. Senior leaders who had expected elevation, and ministers who still nurtured ambition, monitored every misstep. Media narratives—some organic, others encouraged—reinforced the idea that Gupta’s political survival depended on remaining unassertive.

The pressure was not only political or institutional. In August, a public jansunwai turned violent when the Chief Minister was assaulted, injuring her and briefly shifting the narrative from authority to vulnerability. The incident produced a rare moment of public sympathy, but it also sharpened political undercurrents. Questions of security, motive, and responsibility were quickly folded into existing skepticism, even as Gupta chose to return swiftly to public engagement rather than retreat.

Opposition pressure also found symbolic expression. Preparations around Chhath became a political flashpoint, with allegations that the government staged a “clean Yamuna” at select ghats. Whether accurate or exaggerated mattered less than the effect: the controversy blurred logistics and environmental reality into a single narrative of optics over substance, giving critics fresh political oxygen.

This was not simply a crisis of confidence. It was a crisis of positioning.

The arrival of winter intensified that pressure. Delhi’s annual air-pollution crisis flattened political abstractions into lived reality. Citizens did not debate constitutional arrangements; they demanded relief. The crisis exposed not only the structural limits of Delhi’s governance model, but also the limits of Gupta’s early approach—cautious, reactive, and constrained by competing authorities.

It was here that endurance ceased to be sufficient.

Governing Through Constraint

Gupta’s response over the final months of 2025 marked a subtle but meaningful shift—not in rhetoric, but in method.

Rather than seeking confrontation—with the Centre, the Lieutenant Governor, or internal critics—she recalibrated toward control within constraint. Administrative presence increased. Enforcement cycles were advanced rather than delayed. Public communication shifted from explanation to instruction. Policy initiatives were chosen not for ambition, but for certainty of delivery.

The pollution response reflected this change. Enforcement against dust violations began earlier. Public-transport messaging intensified. Electric-bus deployment and health preparedness were foregrounded. Coordination meetings with neighbouring states and central agencies were made more visible, even when outcomes remained limited. No victory was claimed; the smog did not dramatically lift, and winter fog continued to blur both visibility and patience. But the government appeared present rather than defensive.

This recalibration became most visible in delivery. In late December, the government announced a significant EWS housing allocation alongside a series of citizen-facing measures—new flats, welfare distributions, and licensing reforms aimed at easing business operations. These were not ideological statements, but administrative ones, designed to shift public attention from power debates to outcomes.

Crucially, Gupta began to treat visibility as leverage. Joint announcements were framed around outcomes rather than authority. Bureaucratic processes were allowed to move publicly, even when credit was shared. The calculation was deliberate: citizens remember services more than signatures.

Within the party, the shift was equally pragmatic. Potential rivals were absorbed into execution roles rather than sidelined. Constituency-level delivery was prioritised over centralised messaging. Ambition was not extinguished—it was occupied.

By the time the political season began to shift—even as Delhi’s winter remained harsh—Gupta had not altered the city’s power structure, but she had altered how she operated within it. The Chief Minister was no longer waiting for clarity; she was working through ambiguity.

Beyond the First Winter

As 2026 begins, Delhi remains firmly in winter. January is unforgiving, the air still heavy, the cold persistent. Relief—meteorological or otherwise—is not immediate. Politically, however, Rekha Gupta stands at a different point from where she began.

She has not transformed Delhi, nor resolved its chronic crises. What she has crossed is quieter but consequential: the threshold from improbability to presence. In Delhi politics, survival is neither accidental nor permanent. It is tested annually, publicly, and without sentiment.

Gupta’s transformation has not been ideological or dramatic. It has been functional. She has learned where to assert, where to absorb, and where to persist. In a city where power is fragmented and authority rarely absolute, that adjustment may matter more than ambition.

Spring has not yet arrived—February promises movement, not relief. The smog may thin, but winter fog still hangs low, dulling visibility even as the season begins to turn. Rekha Gupta is no longer defined by the surprise of her arrival; she is defined by the fact that she stayed, adapted, and remained standing even as uncertainty lingered. Whether she will mark one full year in office with celebration or choose to underplay the moment—privileging survival over assertion—remains an open question. As she approaches the completion of a tumultuous first year in February 2026, the balance she strikes between endurance and expression may prove as consequential as the winter she has just endured.