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Sushma Swaraj, lawyer, minister, CM

Sushma Swaraj, who was sworn in today as Delhi's first woman chief minister, is a lawyer-turned-politician who entered the capital's electoral scenario only a couple of years ago.

It was only in 1996 that the high-profile Bharatiya Janata Party leader made her debut in Delhi politics when she was named the party candidate for the south Delhi constituency in the Lok Sabha polls. She won the election by a record margin of 114,000 votes for the constituency.

Prior to that she had been contesting assembly elections in Haryana from where she was also sent to the upper house of Parliament in 1990.

Married to Swaraj Kaushal, former governor of Mizoram, the BJP leader had the distinction of becoming the youngest cabinet minister in an assembly.

Swaraj was brought into the Union cabinet in the 13-day maiden BJP government at the Centre in 1996 as the information and broadcasting minister. She has been a spokesperson for the party for quite some time now.

It has been a long haul from Ambala Cantonment where she was born after her parents had settled there from Lahore in the midst of the bloodbath of 1947. Swaraj is the first woman general secretary of the BJP and spokesperson of any national party.

The 46-year-old high-profile spokesperson of BJP would be the first woman chief minister of Delhi, its third after being accorded assembly status in 1993. Union parliamentary affairs minister Madan Lal Khurana was the first to become the chief minister in 1993. He was replaced by Sahib Singh Verma in March 1996.

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