Why A Okay Sharma isn’t just one other Gujarat bureaucrat within the PM’s circle, or simply one other vice-president in Uttar Pradesh BJP

He shouldn’t be the one bureaucrat from Gujarat to have adopted Narendra Modi to the Centre. Or essentially the most high-profile. But it’s A Okay Sharma alone who has made that subsequent leap: from the backstage to the entrance. Nearly 20 years after he emerged as certainly one of Modi’s most trusted males, and 6 months after he took voluntary retirement from the IAS, and have become a BJP MLC, Arvind Kumar Sharma, 58, is now a vice-president of the occasion in Uttar Pradesh.
The politically essential state is within the ultimate lap earlier than subsequent Assembly elections, and there’s some discontent throughout the BJP over Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The alternative of Sharma, right now, with Modi’s blessings, shouldn’t be misplaced on anybody.
A senior official within the Central authorities says that whereas it isn’t uncommon for a PM to have a core group of trusted officers, Sharma stands out among the many charmed circle. “It was understood that any directions from Sharma had the PM’s seal of approval. It helped that Sharma never threw his weight around.”
Sharma earned that confidence steering a few of Modi’s pet initiatives as CM. Retired IAS officer Harsh Brahmbhatt, who was Officer on Special Duty in Modi’s CMO, says as somebody completely “new to government and bureaucracy”, Modi wished officers he might belief. Brahmbhatt says he steered Sharma, P Okay Mishra and Anil Mukim.

Sharma got here into the job in 2001 with reward for his work in districts and expertise within the business division. This put him on the coronary heart of the Vibrant Gujarat Summits. “Sharma went with Modi abroad to get investments,” says a former bureaucrat.
Younger to Mishra and Mukim, Sharma stayed the longest within the CMO, by no means even happening deputations to the Centre, says Brahmbhatt. “When he went for a year for training, we kept the position vacant.” (Mishra is now principal secretary to the PM, whereas Mukim is Gujarat Chief Secretary.)
In Modi’s transfer to Delhi too, Sharma was key, as per a bureaucrat. The CM, looking for to contest from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat, tapped Sharma for “inputs” on “UP matters”. Sharma is initially from Mau in Uttar Pradesh. His father retired as a Senior Incharge of Mau Roadways Bus Station.
In the PMO, Sharma was given the cost of infrastructure. In May 2020, as Covid hit the financial system, Sharma was named Secretary, MSME.However, six months in, Sharma opted for VRS and joined the BJP. An official says, “When Sharma was given an MLC ticket from UP, it was clear that Modi wanted his own man in the state before the elections.”
Soon, Sharma was fronting one other disaster for Modi. In April, as Varanasi struggled underneath the second Covid surge, Sharma was named ‘Covid prabhari’ for the district.
Sharma took conferences of district and police officers, oversaw organising of a DRDO hospital and a tele-consultancy app, and obtained the Command and Control Centre up and operating.
Says a senior Varanasi official, “It is not like this centre wasn’t operational in the first phase. But when Sharma arrived, it was clear that the PM was unhappy.” Another officer says the PMO helped with problems with oxygen, essential medicine, gear. In May, when The Indian Express visited Varanasi, Sharma’s picture featured subsequent to the PM on some posters.
Later, the PM urged states to observe the ‘Varanasi Model of Covid Management’.
But whereas few have doubts concerning Sharma’s administrative skills, it’s as a politician that the daddy of two will probably be examined now. And that is an unknown. Local leaders say that through the interval he was in Varanasi, Sharma had no interplay with occasion cadre.
Much of the push for Sharma the politician is centred round Mau, a part of jap UP, which incorporates each Varanasi and Adityanath’s fiefdom Gorakhpur. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has credited Sharma’s intervention for begin of a particular prepare from Mau to New Delhi; whereas the Mau administration has thanked him for his “guidance”.
However, politics is about greater than that. As a Mau BJP chief notes, “Sharma has been welcomed as a senior leader. But he needs to work to make himself acceptable.”
As a ‘Bhumihar Brahmin’, Sharma belongs to a caste that’s dominant in jap UP and has been a BJP supporter. However, the area already has a number of robust Bhumihar Brahmin faces, similar to Ghosi Lok Sabha MP Atul Singh Rai of the BSP. In 2019, regardless of the BJP wave, and a rape allegation, Rai had gained by over 1.2 lakh votes. Former BJP chief and now J&Okay Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha can also be a Bhumihar from east UP.
In certainly one of his first ‘political’ strikes, Sharma just lately posted on his Twitter deal with @aksharmaBharat his letter to UP BJP chief Swatantra Dev Singh, touching all the precise notes. He talked about how he had stored in contact together with his village and ‘Purvanchal’ regardless of lengthy years outdoors the state; stated he had performed “a small part” in Modi’s “historic” journey; and careworn that the PM’s identify was sufficient to deliver the BJP again to energy in UP.

During latest rumours of a reshuffle within the Adityanath ministry, Sharma’s was one of many names doing the rounds. His appointment as vice-president of the BJP, certainly one of 17 within the state unit, has settled a few of that speak.
However, as an insider places it, “Obviously he is there for some role… but no one knows the PM’s mind.”
BJP spokesperson Ashok Pandey, who hails from Varanasi, says, “Sharma is an honest officer and was brought to Varanasi to do what he is good at, i.e. managing.” He provides that every one representatives in Varanasi helped folks through the pandemic.
Another part within the occasion says it’s these qualities that stand Sharma in good stead. “He is low profile, avoids controversy,” says an individual who has recognized him for years.
His colleagues from Gujarat additionally speak of Sharma’s affability. Brahmbhatt goes one step additional: Sharma, he says, is “ajaatshatru”, one with out enemies.
with LIZ MATHEW & LEENA MISRA