A daughter of Delhi, in service of Delhi

Early life in Model Town

Mira Aggarwal was born on 15 May 1961 in the Model Town area of Delhi, into a family where service to the nation was a way of life. Her father, Lt. Lala Ram Bilas Gupta, was a freedom fighter, a member of the RSS since its early days, and a well-known social worker of Delhi. Growing up in that home, she absorbed both Indian moral values and a modern education, a combination that would define her public character. As a child she joined the Rashtriya Sewika Samiti, beginning a lifetime of organised social work.

A student leader at Delhi University

She joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in 1977, at just sixteen. At Hindu College, University of Delhi, she emerged as a natural organiser, and in 1983–84 was elected Joint Secretary of the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU), and in the same period travelled to Assam to lead a protest against illegal migration and infiltration, an early sign of her willingness to stand where the issues were hardest.

The law as an instrument of justice

After graduating from Hindu College, she earned her law degree from the Campus Law Centre, University of Delhi, and built a successful practice as an advocate before the Delhi High Court. But the law, for her, was never only a profession. To this day she provides free legal counselling to women and helps them secure justice, quietly extending the courtroom's protections to those who could never afford them.

A public life of firsts

Her political journey with the Bharatiya Janata Party began in the party's women's wing, where she served as General Secretary (1993) and then Vice President (1995) of the Delhi Mahila Morcha. First elected municipal councillor from Model Town in 1997, she rose within a year to become the first woman Deputy Mayor of Delhi (1998). She went on to chair the MCD's Education Committee, where children in the corporation's primary schools received tables and chairs for the first time and English entered the syllabus, lifting government schools to stand alongside private ones. She went on to serve as councillor from Kohat Enclave, and head the Appointments Committee, before being elected unopposed on 30 April 2012 as the first Mayor of the newly created North Delhi Municipal Corporation, representing Sawan Park ward. The MCD had been trifurcated into three corporations that year and was re-unified in 2022, which is why her office is remembered simply as Mayor of Delhi. It was her fourth public election, counting her DUSU win as a student, and her fourth victory.

Across every office she held, the throughline is the same: schools that teach better, streets that work for the people who use them, and a government that answers when its citizens call.

In service still

Today Mira Aggarwal serves as a member of the National Executive Committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party. She remains an active social worker, associated with numerous NGOs working for the upliftment of women, the cause that has run through her entire public life.

Family

Mira Aggarwal is married to Dr. Anil Aggarwal and is the mother of two sons, Vaibhav and Sambhav.