JOIN USNupur, Naveen: Bright stars of BJP who fell from grace
One was a student leader at the Delhi University unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, who took on Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi Assembly elections in 2015. The other was a seasoned crime reporter who was usually found skulking around the corridors of Delhi Police Headquarters in the ITO area.
Nupur Sharma and Naveen Jindal both had promising political careers, with both getting started in the capital. Today, both are the embattled spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Sharma and Jindal fell from grace after they made disparaging comments about the Prophet and the Muslim community, respectively.
The two have created an uproar internationally as their comments had the Arab World and several Middle East countries up in arms against India.
Nupur Sharma’s political career began in college when she was studying at Delhi University in 2008; she was elected president of the Delhi University Students Union. She was the only ABVP leader in the Union, while the other office bearers were from the Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India.
At DU, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in economics from Hindu College, following which she studied LLB from the university’s Faculty of Law. Between 2009 and 2010, she served as an Ambassador for Teach For India. After that, she pursued a postgraduate degree in law from the London School of Economics in 2011.
Her political break came in 2015 when the BJP fielded her from the New Delhi seat in the Delhi Assembly elections against Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal. She lost the elections but gained a political career.
In 2017, Sharma was appointed the spokesperson of the Delhi unit—a year after Manoj Tiwari was appointed the Delhi BJP chief. When JP Nadda took over as the party president in 2020, she was promoted as a national spokesperson.
She has held positions in the party’s youth wing, the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, as well as positions in the national executive committee of the youth wing and state executive committee of Delhi BJP.
Her colleagues at the party remember her as someone who had a bright future. “She was sincere and was generally seen among the TV circuit as a firebrand spokesperson. We thought she had a long way to go within the BJP,” said a party colleague, who knew her for over 15 years, and was in the ABVP with her.
Jindal, on the other hand, was a seasoned crime reporter in the National Capital Region before he joined the BJP. Senior crime reporters in Delhi remember seeing him at the Delhi Police headquarters at Delhi’s ITO. In his two-decade-long career as a crime reporter, Jindal worked for Zee News, Sahara and Punjab Kesari. He was also involved in starting popular crime shows such as ‘Crime Files' and ‘Crime Reporter’.
He covered the Indian Parliament attack in 2003, as well as the attack on the Akshardham Mandir in 2002—he even produced documentaries on these events. Apart from that, he sought to “expose” through his book, ‘Islamic Madarse Benakaab’ (Islamic Madrassas Unmasked), how the Madrassas taught communally charged ideas to students.
Inspired by its ideology, Jindal joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and later contested for the Laxmi Nagar seat in the 2003 Assembly polls on a BJP ticket.
He was later appointed the media chief of the Delhi BJP unit.
Jindal’s tweets have landed him in trouble several times; last month, the Punjab Police filed FIRs against him and Delhi BJP leader Tejinder Bagga for tweeting a clip of Kejriwal. Recently, a spat broke out between him and another BJP leader, which escalated into a scuffle.
Jindal’s latest transgression was a tweet that saw him immediately expelled from the party. Sharma, on the other hand, was suspended for the remarks she made against Prophet Mohammed during a TV debate.