CHANDIGARH, June 4 -- Archana Gupta, a radiologist by profession and a grass-roots worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), formally took over on Wednesday as Haryana BJP's second woman president in over four decades, in a ceremony attended by a large number of party workers and frontline leaders from across the state.

The presence of the party's top brass at Gupta's installation ceremony at Panchkamal--a sprawling state headquarters of the BJP in Panchkula---is being widely seen as a carefully crafted show of unity, continuity and a smooth leadership transition in Haryana, a state known for deeply patriarchal society, a severely skewed sex ratio and infamous for killing the unborn girl child in the womb.

The BJP workers, including w...