The other BJP leader who left party red-faced with remarks on judiciary: Who is Dinesh Sharma?

A professor of Commerce at the Lucknow University, Sharma has deep roots in the RSS and is seen to be an approachable leader. He forayed into politics with the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the RSS’s student wing, and also served as its Lucknow Mahanagar president.

Starting off at the grassroots in the BJP as a ward president, he rose up the ranks and also served as the state president of its youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha. In 1998, he was appointed the vice-president of the Uttar Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation.

In 2004, when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee contested the Lok Sabha polls from Lucknow, Sharma served as the convenor of his election office and was a part of the election management committee.

Sharma’s big break in politics came in November 2006 when he was elected the Mayor of Lucknow, seen to be a stronghold of the BJP due to the significant presence of upper castes and Shia Muslims, who have voted for the party in Lucknow. In 2012, Sharma won the mayoral election again, this time by a huge margin of 1.71 lakh votes.

Sharma’s rise in the BJP continued, and in 2014, he was appointed BJP national vice-president and subsequently was made the party’s Gujarat in-charge. He was also the national in-charge of the membership drive that the BJP undertook following its Lok Sabha victory in 2014, leading it to become the “world’s largest political party”.

In 2016, Prime Minister Modi attended the Ram Leela in Lucknow’s Aishbagh on Sharma’s invitation, illustrating his links to the BJP senior leadership.

The following year, while he was serving as the Mayor of Lucknow, the BJP appointed him Deputy CM in the first Yogi Adityanath Cabinet. The move, at the time, was seen as the party’s attempt to project a moderate face of the government as Sharma was seen to have a good rapport with Muslims as well as clerics. Throughout his tenure, Sharma remained an MLC.

As the BJP returned to power in 2022, Sharma was replaced by another Brahmin leader, Brajesh Pathak, in the Adityanath Cabinet, and he was sent to the Rajya Sabha in September 2023.

This is not the first time that the BJP has distanced itself from Sharma’s comments. In 2018, he sent the party scrambling to control damage after he suggested that Sita was a “test-tube baby”.

“All of us know that Lord Ram returned from Lanka in the Pushpak Vimaan. This proves aircraft existed then. It is said Sita was born in a ghada (pitcher) … Janak (Sita’s father) used a plough and a baby emerged from the pitcher … This technology was similar to that used in test-tube babies today,” he said. The remarks invited a rap on the knuckles from the BJP’s national leadership, which directed him to exercise restraint while making speeches.