A surprise pick, Sharma rose steadily to head Raj

A day after picking a relatively unknown former state minister, Mohan Yadav, as the next chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sprung an even bigger surprise by anointing first time legislator Bhajan Lal Sharma for the top post in Rajasthan.

- Sachin Saini, Suresh Foujdar

Yet, like in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (where former party president Vishnu Dev Sai has ascended to the top position), Sharma may be little-known outside the state, but has steadily climbed the ladder of the BJP organisation from an active ABVP member in college to Bharatpur district president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha to a village sarpanch to three-time organisational secretary of the state BJP to now being named Rajasthan chief minister.

Born into a family of farmers in Atari village in Bharatpur, the 56-year-old Sharma studied in government schools in his home tehsil of Nadbai before completing his BA at the Maharani Shri Jaya government college in 1989. In 1993, he finished a Master's in Political Science from Rajasthan University in Jaipur.

It was during his college years that he joined the ABVP, the student wing of the BJP, serving on multiple posts including as co-convenor for Bharatpur district. By 1991, he was the secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. "He courted arrest in 1990 when the ABVP had organised a march to Kashmir that was eventually stopped in Udhampur," a senior BJP leader said, asking not to be named.