If you thought Bansuri Swaraj’s first identity was being Sushma Swaraj’s daughter, think again. The 40-year-old Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party leader has just replaced deputy foreign minister Meenakshi Lekhi as Lok Sabha election candidate in her New Delhi constituency. Last year, Swaraj was given the responsibility of co-convener of the BJP Delhi Legal Cell — a first official role for her — and ever since her rise has been steep.
Bansuri Swaraj is a secretary of the Delhi unit of the BJP and has a natural flair for oratory like her mother, late union minister Sushma Swaraj, whose parliamentary interventions were praised by the likes of former deputy prime minister LK Advani.
Since last year, her political career has seen a sharp upward turn that culminated on Saturday evening in her getting the BJP ticket from the New Delhi constituency for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. “I feel grateful… With the resolution of ‘ab ki baar 400 paar’, every BJP worker will work to make Narendra Modi the ‘Pradhan Sevak’ for the third time,” said the millennial leader.
Swaraj has been a sharp critic of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party. Interestingly, Kejriwal’s assembly seat falls under the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency.
Someone who never crosses the line of civility, Swaraj last year showed how one can remain decorous while being aggressive. Calling AAP “jhagdalu (quarrelsome) and nikammi (useless)”, while commenting on the Centre’s National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, she gave a glimpse of her late mother, which is said to have caught the attention of many senior BJP leaders.
Her curt reply that the BJP will never need Kejriwal after the Delhi CM claimed that he was under pressure to move to the saffron fold too didn’t go unnoticed.
Sources said Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva and general secretary (organisation) Pavan Rana both had Bansuri Swaraj as a top pick among names that the party unit sent to the central election committee for consideration.
Bansuri was the additional advocate general for Haryana and has had a private practice since 2007. Right now, she is an advocate of the Supreme Court of India, where recently she appeared as one of the counsels in the Chandigarh mayor election case. She has expertise in real estate, tax, international commercial arbitrations, and criminal trials.
The soft-spoken yet assertive politician graduated in English Literature from the University of Warwick and has a master’s degree from St Catherine’s College at the University of Oxford.
Delhi BJP sources told News18 that in Bansuri Swaraj they see a possible challenger to Arvind Kejriwal in the not-so-distant future and wish to bring her back to the faction-ridden Delhi unit if she proves herself in the years ahead and the top leadership agrees.
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