Bhajanlal Sharma named Rajasthan CM; Diya Kumari, Prem Chand Bairwa Dy CMs

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has named Bhajanlal Sharma as the chief minister of Rajasthan. The new chief minister will be replacing Congress' Ashok Gehlot after the BJP won a majority in Rajasthan with 115 seats, defeating the Congress party, which secured 69 seats in 2023 Assembly elections. Sharma was reportedly suggested by Vasundhara Raje, who has held the post twice and was the first female chief minister of Rajasthan.

Bhajanlal Sharma, 56, hails from Bharatpur, has been a long-time member of the BJP party but this was his first run as MLA from the Sangner Assembly seat, which falls under the Jaipur Lok Sabha constituency. He defeated Pushpendra Bhardwaj of the Indian National Congress with a margin of 48,081 votes. The total percentage of voters in Sanganer Assembly Constituency was recorded at 70.3 per cent.

Prem Chand Bairwa, who won the Dudu seat, and former MP Diya Kumari, who secured the Vidhyadhar Nagar Assembly seat against Congress' Sitaram Agarwal, have been named deputy chief ministers in Rajasthan.

Former Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari won the seat with an impressive margin of 71,368 votes and was a favourite for the position of chief minister in the state. Other candidates for the post included Mahant Balaknath, better known as Baba Balaknath, who won the Tijara seat by a short margin of 6,173 against Congress candidate Imran Khan, and former MP Kirodi Lal Meena. Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat and BJP's state unit chief of the Rajasthan CP Joshi were also considered top contenders. 

After a lot of suspense, the BJP has secured leadership in all three states, including Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

The Rajasthan State Assembly elections for 199 of 200 seats were conducted in a single phase on November 25. The polling for the Karanpur Assembly seat in Sriganganagar of Rajasthan will be conducted on January 5, 2024, and votes will be counted on January 8.