Bhajan Lal Sharma | Dedicated ‘Sangh’ volunteer

Bhajan Lal Sharma. Illustration: Satheesh Vellinezhi

Bhajan Lal Sharma’s elevation from the Bharatiya Janata Party’s lowest ranks to the Chief Minister’s post is seen as a morale booster for the low-key and faceless workers of the organisation who silently toil on the sidelines for the party.

Party workers point to an incident when they talk about Mr. Sharma’s low-key activism. There was a transformer next to his house in Bharatpur. He made several rounds to the electricity department requesting it to be moved, but nothing happened for years. But within hours of the announcement that he would be the new Chief Minister of Rajasthan, the transformer was removed.

A first-time MLA from Sanganer constituency in Jaipur, Mr. Sharma, 56, is the second Brahmin Chief Minister of the State in the past three decades. He will have two deputies, Diya Kumari, a Rajput, and Prem Chand Bairwa, who hails from a Dalit community.

Mr. Sharma is the son of a farmer, Kishan Swaroop Sharma, at Atari village in Bharatpur. He was an average student in school, and chose to study arts for graduation and did his Bachelors of Education (B.Ed.) as his father wanted him to become a teacher. But destiny had some other plans for Mr. Sharma who could not clear the interview for a teacher’s job. When the father’s dream was shattered, he decided to follow his own, which was politics.

Mr. Sharma, who was associated with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), is known to be a dedicated volunteer of the ‘Sangh’. After completing college in late 1980’s, Mr Sharma decided to help family in farming and milk business.

In his ‘Jeevan Parichay’ (Life Introduction), Mr. Sharma writes how in 1990, when the ABVP organised ‘Kashmir Bachao Andolan’, he as a student leader participated in the same and courted arrest in Udhampur. He went to jail again in 1992, during the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation during which Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was demolished. An FIR was filed against him in 2011 for Gopalgarh riots in which 10 Meo Muslims were killed during a dispute between Gujjar and Meos over a piece of land. The case is being investigated by the CBI.

Tryst with power

Mr. Sharma’s first tryst with power was in 2000 when he won a village sarpanch (headman) election and served in the post for five years. His bio data says he also remained a Village Panchyat Samiti member between 2010 and 2015, but his friends say this post was held by his wife.

In his 35-year-long political career, Mr. Sharma served over half-a-dozen organisational posts in the BJP, including as the BJP Yuva Morcha (youth wing) leader, BJP district president of Bharatpur, and BJP State vice-president (2014-16) and State general secretary (2016-2023).

Apart from being a full time politician, Mr. Sharma also likes cooking. Another apocryphal story making rounds about Mr. Sharma and his friend’s group is that they had organised a ‘rakshabandhan samaroh’ and made the students tie Rakhi to ABVP workers to promote “Indian traditions”. The first decision Mr. Sharma took after the oath ceremony was to form a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the recent cases of paper leaks in government recruitment examinations.

A single page bio-data of the new CM of Rajasthan has a reference to his long and ‘loyal’ association with the BJP, but even he was once a rebel. Unhappy with the saffron party for denying him ticket for the Assembly election from the Nadbai constituency under which his village falls, in 2003, he went into the poll fray as a candidate of the then newly formed party, Samajik Nyay Manch. Later he returned to the BJP fold.

A devotee of ‘Giriraj’ (Lord Krishna), Mr. Sharma has special love for cows and he was also looking to open a ‘gau shala’ (cow shelter) very recently.

The script of his success was written during the 2021 West Bengal election where he was sent to handle campaigning. This is when he came closer to Amit Shah, who assured him that the party will take care of him. And the party did, as he was given ticket from Sanganer, a seat from where the BJP has never lost since 2003, instead of his preferred seat, Nadbai in Bharatpur. And now he is the Chief Minister.