New Delhi: The BJP has announced that first-time MLA Bhajanlal Sharma will be the next chief minister of Rajasthan, while Diya Kumari and Prem Chand Bairwa will be his deputies. The Ajmer North MLA Vasudev Devnani will be the assembly speaker.

Sharma, the 56-year-old MLA from Sanganer, is a long-time party member who was associated with the ABVP during his student days. According to NDTV, the party’s state general secretary is seen as an organisation man. Sharma has an MA in politics from Rajasthan University and has declared one criminal case against him.

With the announcement, the BJP has now dropped all of its previous chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh (Shivraj Singh Chouhan), Chhattisgarh (Raman Singh) and Rajasthan (Vasundhara Raje). In Madhya Pradesh, Mohan Yadav was chosen as the new chief minister while Vishnu Deo Sai will lead the Chhattisgarh government.

Once again, the party’s top leadership asked Raje to propose Sharma’s name as the new chief minister at the legislature party meeting in Jaipur on Tuesday afternoon. The central observers for the meeting were defence minister Rajnath Singh, Vinod Tawde and Saroj Pandey.

In the 2003 elections, Sharma contested as an independent candidate from the Nadbai constituency but secured only 5,969 votes out of the total 95,018 valid votes.

For the past five terms, either Vasundhara Raje or Ashok Gehlot have been chief ministers of Rajasthan.

The BJP won a convincing victory in Rajasthan, bagging 115 of the 199 seats that went to the polls.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a September rally in Jaipur, declared that the party would not project a chief ministerial face. However, leaders like Rajyavardhan Rathore, Diya Kumari, Kirodilal Meena, and Baba Balaknath were among those considered.

Other contenders for the position included the party’s leader of opposition Rajendra Rathore, and Jat Leader Satish Poonia. However, both leaders faced significant defeats in their respective areas.

Raje, a two-time chief minister and former minister in the A.B. Vajpayee government, was not given the opportunity for a third term. This was even though Raje campaigned for 49 candidates, of whom 36 emerged victorious.

Unlike Chouhan, to assert her claim to the chief minister’s chair, Vasundhara Raje also went to Delhi and met with the party’s top leadership, but now it seems that things didn’t go in her favour.

With inputs from Yaqut Ali.