Who was Bhanwar Lal Sharma, senior Rajasthan Congress MLA, dead at 77?

Bhanwar Lal Sharma, the senior Congress leader and MLA from Rajasthan’s Sardarshahar city in Churu district, passed away on Sunday morning at the SMS hospital in Jaipur. Sharma was suffering from an age-related illness for the past several days. The politician was 77 years old at the time of his death.

Reports say that Sharma was suffering from many diseases due to his old age, including a kidney issue. He was earlier admitted at the Medanta hospital in Gurgaon but was discharged from there after his health got relatively better. On Saturday, after a sudden deterioration in his condition, he was taken to the SMS hospital in Jaipur where he passed away.

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Many leaders in Rajasthan, including CM Ashok Gehlot, have mourned the death of the Sardarshahar MLA.  

Who was Bhanwar Lal Sharma? 

Bhanwar Lal Sharma was born on April 17, 1945, at the Jaitsiar village of Sardarshahar. The Congress politician was a seven-time MLA from Sardarshahar and five of his seven terms were back to back starting with the eighth Rajasthan Assembly to the 12th.

Sharma started his political career at the age of 17 when he became the Sarpanch of the Jaitsiar Gram Panchayat in 1962. He held the post till 1982 when he was elected as the head of the Sardarshahar Panchayat Samiti. During his Panchayat career, Sharma was not affiliated with any party organisation. 

He became MLA for the first time in 1985 from the Lok Dal. In between, he switched to the Janata Dal united when former Prime Minister VP Singh founded it in October 1988. He was re-elected for his second term in a Janata Dal ticket in 1989. 

He remained with the Janata Dal and was elected for his third term in 1995. However, with the party slowly fading out of popularity, he switched to the Indian National Congress and was elected to the Rajasthan Assembly on a Congress ticket in 1998.

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Since then, he has been elected three more times in 2003, 2013, and 2018. In his career as a politician, he has served as a cabinet minister and the Deputy Chief Whip in the Vidhan Sabha

Sharma was also a popular leader of the Brahmin caste in Rajasthan. He headed the Rajasthan Brahmin Maha Sabha – an organisation of over 75 lakh Brahmins, from 1994 to 2000 and again from 2002 till the present.