The Delhi government has constituted the Delhi Commission for Women and the Delhi Minorities Commission with new chairpersons. Lata Gupta has been named Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women, whereas Nirmal Jain has been appointed Chairperson of the Delhi Minorities Commission.
Chief Minister Rekha Gupta stated that these initiatives aim to enhance the protection of women’s rights, support their empowerment, ensure the welfare of minority communities, and safeguard their constitutional rights.
The DCW chairperson’s post fell vacant after Swati Maliwal resigned in January 2024 after the then ruling AAP decided to send her to the Rajya Sabha.
Nirmal Jain, the new chairperson of the Delhi Minorities Commission, is a former mayor and a veteran BJP leader with five decades association with the RSS. Jain became the first non-Muslim head of the commission formed in 2000. While Delhi BJP vice president and former MCD councillor Lata Gupta has been appointed Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), which had been lying vacant for more than two years.
Shyam Bala, Malti Verma, Lata Sodhi, Sanrika Sharma Jha, and Renu Bhalla appointed as members of Women’s Commission while as Kuldeep Singh and Mohammad Haroon have been appointed as members of Minorities Commission.
The Minorities Commission had been headless for three years after Jain’s predecessor Zakir Khan stepped down in 2023. Kuldeep Singh and Mohammad Haroon have been nominated as its members.
Jain, 70, in his profile shared that he was a volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) for 50 years and also associated with Jansangh, the precursor of the BJP, as treasurer of its Shahdara district unit. In 1977, he served as a Vistarak of RSS in Jammu. Jain was associated with Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, an affiliate of RSS, and took part in student politics at Delhi University, reads his profile.
Jain has been associated with the BJP since the inception of the party in 1980 and served as president of Shahdara district. In 2007, he won civic body polls from Shahdara ward in the erstwhile East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). He served as Leader of House in EDMC from 2018 to 2020 and became mayor of East Delhi in 2021. Jain, a commerce and law graduate of DU, has a family business.
The Delhi Minorities Commission was set up under the Delhi Minorities Commission Act, 1999, passed by the Delhi Legislative Assembly on December 24, 1999, to safeguard the rights and interests of the minority communities. Under the Act, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist and Parsi have been notified as minority communities. The “Jain” community was notified as Minority Community in the NCT of Delhi through a notification dated October 13, 2008.
According to Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, the Delhi Government is ensuring that women and minority communities receive effective protection of their rights, dignified opportunities and timely justice.
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