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Just that in BJP’s season of chief ministerial surprises, Sharma would have looked like the unlikeliest of candidates to make the cut. Maybe even to himself.
For 34 years, barring an interlude in 2003 when he moved to the now-defunct Samajik Nyay Manch, the 56-year-old CM-designate has been what some would call “a silent, selfless and humble” saffron worker.
From being jailed in 1992 during theRam Janmabhoomi agitation to his arrest in J&K’s Udhampur during ABVP’s Kashmir march of 1990, Sharma’s image was always that of someone who put party before self.
Bhajan Lal Sharma: Rajasthan CM-designate a crorepati from Sanganer Assembly Constituency
Unbeknown to him, the BJP central leadership would have been impressed enough to see him as a potential administrator, an indication of which came when he was made the party general secretary of Rajasthan in 2014. He has retained that post for almost a decade.
Before 2023, Sharma’s only other tryst with electoral politics was two decades earlier. He contested and lost the Nadbai assembly seat in his native district of Bharatpur in 2003 as a candidate of Samajik Nyay Manch, the erstwhile party formed by former minister Devi Singh Bhati, Suresh Mishra (who recently returned to BJP from Congress) and Karni Sena founder Lokendra Singh Kalvi.
Sharma was back in the BJP fold the year after his unsuccessful poll debut. He remained in the background until his nomination for Jaipur’s Brahmin-dominant Sanganer seat ostensibly caused heartburn among rivals, who projected him as “an outsider”.
True to his ways, Sharma made the campaign more about BJP and PM Narendra Modi than himself. He struck a chord with women voters by highlighting Modi’s commitment to their welfare.
The local RSS cadre backed him to the hilt.
Sharma traces his political roots to his school days, when he moved out of his native Atari village in Nadbai to continue his studies and became involved in ABVP’s activities. He became the chief of Bhartiya Janta Yuva Morcha’s state unit in 1991. At the age of 27, he was elected sarpanch, a post he held for two terms. Sharma, who has a master’s in political science, was also state BJP vice-president for several years.
Two deputies, one strategy
Former MP Diya Kumari, a member of the erstwhile Jaipur royal family, boasts a blemish-free record in three elections since joining BJP in 2013. Winning the Rajsamand LS seat in 2019 may rank as her biggest victory in terms of votes, but being picked as one of the two deputy CMs of the new government is indeed her crowning glory.
Prem Chand Bairwa, the other deputy CM, was elected MLA from Dudu constituency near Jaipur. The 54-year-old’s appointment along with Diya Kumari is being seen as part of BJP’s strategy of balancing caste equations by naming a Brahmin face as the CM and a Scheduled Caste and a Rajput leader each as the deputies. Bairwa, an SC community, has traditionally voted for Congress.
(With inputs from Joychen Joseph)
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