Bhajan Lal Sharma: From Village Sarpanch to Chief Minister of Rajasthan

Jaipur: Bhajan Lal Sharma was shown in the very last row of a group photo taken at the BJP headquarters here before the legislative party meeting earlier this week.

However, once the BJP declared that he had been selected as the head of the Rajasthan Assembly party, he suddenly moved to the front and center stage, if not front and center, an hour or so later.

Three decades after being appointed as a public figure for the first time as the sarpanch of a hamlet in the Bharatpur district, Bhajan Lal Sharma, 56, took the oath of office as chief minister today.

Bhajan Lal Sharma, a new MLA from Jaipur’s Sanganer seat and general secretary of the BJP’s state unit, has maintained a low profile inside the party.

A devout follower of the Ramayana, Bhajan Lal Sharma actively participated in the campaign to build a Ram temple in Ayodhya at the location of the former Babri mosque. He went to prison for this in 1992.

That was somewhere in the early years of his political career. Twice, beginning when he was 27, he served as the local sarpanch.

Mr. Sharma has held a number of positions in the party organization and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) during the last 30 years.

He attended education in Nadbai town and Atari village in the Bharatpur district.

Later, he became involved in social concerns in Nabadi and Bharatpur and joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP), which is affiliated with the RSS.

Thousands of students from all across the nation assembled in Jammu to march towards Srinagar during the 1990 ABVP protest, in which Mr. Sharma took an active role.

When the police intervened, Mr. Sharma was one of several who were in Udhampur courting arrest to demonstrate against atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.

Next, Bhajan Lal Sharma discussed the BJYM, the youth wing of the BJP. Before serving as the district president and district secretary of the parent party in Bharatpur, he was the district president of BJYM three times.

Mr. Sharma is the owner of an agricultural supply company and has a master’s degree in political science.

He is valued by the leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the BJP for being a “silent,” “disciplined,” and obedient worker. The party presidents at the BJP’s state headquarters were Ashok Parnami, Madan Lal Saini, Satish Poonia, and finally C P Joshi. However, Mr. Sharma was a constant at the Jaipur office in one capacity or another.

Party officials claim that he was a frequent visitor to Govardhan-Giriraj Parikarma near Mathura, where J P Nadda, the current president of the BJP, also used to go and where they would meet. At the time, Mr. Sharma served as Bharatpur’s district president.

Senior figures are said to have been pleased by him when serving as Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s advisor during his 2021 West Bengal assembly election campaign.

115 of the 199 seats that were up for election in Rajasthan’s assembly elections in November were won by the BJP.

Twelve days had passed since the vote results, which sparked wild speculation about the party’s candidate for chief minister. Then, Bhajan Lal Sharma was sworn in.

Prominent BJP figures like as Vasundhara Raje, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, and Arjun Ram Meghwal were being discussed as potential candidates for chief minister.

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However, on Friday, they were seated on the dais when the unexpected Bhajan Lal Sharma recited the oath.