Jaipur, Dec 15: Twelve days after the BJP defeated the Congress in the assembly elections, Bhajan Lal Sharma, a first-time MLA, took the oath of office as chief minister of Rajasthan on Friday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the top BJP officials were present at the ceremony. On his 57th birthday, Sharma, a BJP state general secretary, assumed leadership of the state. Governor Kalraj Mishra also swore in Diya Kumari and Prem Chand Bairwa as his deputy chief ministers. The oath was taken in Hindi by all three.Ashok Gehlot, the departing chief minister, was present at the event in front of this location’s historic Albert Hall. It was witnessed by a sizable contingent of BJP MLAs and employees from all over the state. On December 12, Sharma, a leader backed by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was named leader of the BJP legislature party. PM Modi, President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, and a number of other senior party leaders were present at the swearing-in ceremony.Attendees included the recently appointed chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mohan Yadav; the chief ministers of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Goa; and the deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Keshav Prasad Maurya. Mahants and seers from various locations also attended the ceremony. “Jai Shri Ram” and “Modi-Modi” were yelled by BJP supporters as Sharma, Diya Kumari, and Bairwa took the oath. One of the leaders who arrived early for the programme was Ashok Gehlot, who was seated next to “rival” Gajendra Singh Shekhwat and was observed conversing with him. Gehlot has been smearing Union minister Shekhawat with accusations of his involvement in the “scam” involving the Sanjivani Credit Co-operative Society on a regular basis. In response, Shekhawat has brought a defamation lawsuit in Delhi against Gehlot. There was a brief disturbance at the Ramniwas Garden entry point just before the oath ceremony, where people were being forced into the venue. Before the police could stop them, a number of people leaped over the barricades.After winning the assembly elections, the BJP chose Bhajan Lal Sharma, a first-time MLA, to be Rajasthan’s new chief minister on December 12, putting an end to days of speculation. After BJP MLAs convened here and chose the 56-year-old Sanganer legislator to lead their legislature party, the unexpected selection was made public. Prior to the legislature party meeting, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and Vasundhara Raje were also considered the front-runners for the position of chief minister. With a margin of 48,081 votes, Sharma, the party’s Brahmin face, emerged victorious in the Bharatpur district of Jaipur’s Sanganer constituency. He graduated with a master’s in political science.Following the recent assembly elections, the BJP promoted a number of lesser-known MLAs to the position of chief minister, and he is the third in line. The other two are Mohan Yadav, who was recently sworn in as the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, and Vishnu Deo Sai, the chief minister of Chhattisgarh. In the November 25 assembly elections, the Congress received 69 seats in Rajasthan, while the BJP secured 115 seats. In the state, 199 out of 200 seats had polling.
