Balmukundacharya, Hawa Mahal BJP MLA, whose tirade against meat vendors went viral

Among other videos, which subsequently emerged, was one outside the Old M M Khan Hotel, one of the more popular eateries in Jaipur. An infuriated Balmukundacharya could be seen telling the restaurant manager that women cannot pass by and the “sharabi kebabi (drunk and characterless)” persons who throng there spoil the atmosphere. He says this is “Apara Kashi, not Karachi” and then some around him indulge in chants of “Jai Shri Ram”.

It is another story that he apologised the next day and said he had merely raised the issues as a common citizen. Jaipur Municipal Corporation (Heritage) Additional Commissioner, Kartar Singh, says under the JMC heritage limits, there are 115 restaurants serving non-vegetarian food with a licence, while 150 others do not have a licence. “We are issuing them a notice to get the licence, else they will have to be shut down,” Singh says.

Talking to The Indian Express, Balmukundacharya, 47, says the issue he raised was valid but it was perceived “in a wrong way”. “Rules say that meat should be cut in factories and then distributed. But here, there are unlicensed shops all around, leading to diseases. Now after I raised it, there is a queue of people seeking a licence. Where were these people for five years?”

Like his campaign, his election also made headlines. Till the penultimate round of counting, his opponent, R R Tiwari of the Congress, was leading. However, in the final round, Tiwari received only 374 votes against Balmukundacharya’s 4,061 and lost the poll. It was especially shocking for Tiwari as he lost by just 974 votes; the AIMIM and AAP candidates had together polled 1,161 votes, slightly more than the Congress’s margin of defeat.

Of 2.5 lakh voters in Hawa Mahal, 35% or about 90,000 are said to be Muslims. However, a Muslim has never been elected from this seat, which is known for electing upper caste candidates almost exclusively. Since 1951, the Congress has won this seat only four times while the BJP, since its inception in the 1980s, has won this seat seven times.

While he may be a debutant legislator, Balmukundacharya is well known among locals as the mahant of the popular Hathoj Dham temple. The MLA says his family has a long-running tradition of pooja, sewa and adhyatam (prayer, service and spirituality).

“Last five to six generations of my family have been devoted to temples, maths, ashrams and gaushalas. I myself run an ashram, mandir, gaushala and a gurukul. Hathoj Dham is the centre (of our religious activities) with multiple branches,” he says.

For his highest educational qualification, his election affidavit merely lists him as “sakshar” or literate. He says he could not appear for his Class 10 exam for reasons he did not specify, but learned ways of the Sanatan Dharma through pooja paath (prayer recitations) and Vedic studies from a gurukul and at home.

He says he has also learned through his service at religious institutions and organisations, through sant sewa (serving the saints), organising bhandara (charitable community feasts), and yagya (ritual worship) throughout his life.

While the MLA’s father, Mahant Purushottam Das, is mainly involved in service and prayers at Hathoj Dham as well as the gaushala, his mother passed away during the Covid-19 pandemic. He has a younger brother, Pandit Akshay Kumar, who serves at a Ganesh temple. As per his election affidavit, he is married and has three “dependents”, but is guarded about their identities.

He is also associated with various social and religious organisations. He says he is the current state president of the Akhil Bharatiya Sant Samiti, state president of the Math Mandir Pujari Mahasangh and Rajasthan patron of the Pujari Mahasangh, which has its head office in Jodhpur.

He is also associated with Shri Balaji Jan Kalyan Sewa Trust and undertakes social work, such as organising sports in schools and giving away clothes, through this organisation, and says that due to his social work he is familiar with the difficulties faced by the poor.

Balmukundacharya says he has also been associated with the RSS, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. “I have been associated with the RSS since childhood. Wherever I went or worked, I constantly went to (RSS) shakhas,” he says. He claims he has held various posts in RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, but stops short of specifying what positions he had in these organisations.

He also claims he went to jail twice over campaigns for the Ram temple in Ayodhya. On the police case mentioned in his affidavit, he says, “It is an old case, a blackmailer filed a case against our gaushala that it is not our land. The police shut the case since it was false. The land has been with us since 1971. And it was given to us for Rs 1,800 by the government.”

Incidentally, a court ordered another FIR against him on Saturday for voluntarily causing hurt, wrongful restraint, as well as sections of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, including for hurling casteist slurs. Complainant Surajmal Regar said Balmukundacharya and his father assaulted him in August and threatened to take over his land. Regar said he had approached the local police station with a request for an FIR, which was turned down.

Asked about the issues concerning his constituency, he says there are countless issues that have bothered him. “In the last five years, there has been an exodus in the walled city. Businessmen and those living here for generations had been vacating. There are also encroachments on religious places, and the old temples and structures were razed or changed beyond recognition,” he claims.

Next, he claims parks have become hotspots for drug addicts and that women’s safety is an issue. Because of all this, tourists have stopped coming and business is dwindling, he says.

Once the new government is sworn in, he says his priority would be restoration of temples and old structures, developing parks, businesses, addressing traffic woes, installing cameras to provide security, deploying female police squads, setting up a sports academy and a yoga centre, all of which would help attract tourists.

“My vision is that ‘all 36 qaum (all communities)’ are now my family. Hindus – which include Sikhs, hence there is no need to mention them separately – Muslims and Christians, we are all brothers. We have to change this city and make it beautiful, we have to restore the old form of the city,” he says.