Vishnu Dutt Sharma appointed new chief of BJP's Madhya Pradesh unit

Sharma, who was the national general secretary of the ABVP, had joined the BJP in 2013

Former RSS Pracharak and Khajuraho Lok Sabha member Vishnu Dutt (VD) Sharma (50) has been nominated as the new president of the Madhya Pradesh BJP. Party’s national general secretary Arun Singh released a letter to this effect on Saturday.

Sharma, who is succeeding Jabalpur Lok Sabha member Rakesh Singh, started his political career in 1986 in the RSS student wing Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. The RSS leadership had strongly recommended Sharma’s candidature, ignoring lobbying by other aspirants, including former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and former minister Narottam Mishra.

The new state chief is also considered close to the national president J P Nadda. They have worked together in the ABVP as well as the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP. Nadda’s wife Mallika, who hails from Jabalpur, was also an ABVP office bearer in the Madhya Pradesh unit along with VD Sharma.

On his nomination, VD Sharma tweeted that he was grateful to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and party president JP Nadda for reposing trust in “an ordinary worker like him”.

Born on October 1, 1970 in Morena district, Sharma has emerged as a big Brahmin face in the state BJP unit. Incidentally, leader of the Opposition Gopal Bhargava is also a Brahmin. It is first time that Brahmin leaders are holding two important posts simultaneously in Madhya Pradesh. The move is being viewed as RSS’s strategy to woo the community which was at the forefront of the anti-reservation stir before the assembly election in the state in November 2018. Anger of the upper castes, particularly Brahmins, was considered largely responsible for the BJP losing power to the Congress after 15 years in Madhya Pradesh.

Although Sharma was active in the RSS and its affiliate student wing for a long time, he formally entered the BJP in 2013 as the Sangh’s Pracharak. In 2016, he was nominated state BJP general secretary and successfully contested Lok Sabha election from Khajuraho seat in 2019.