New Delhi: About two years after Nupur Sharma was suspended from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for making derogatory remarks about Prophet Mohammad, she is under consideration for a party ticket for the Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh’s high-profile Rae Bareli constituency, multiple BJP leaders have told ThePrint.
“Her name has been suggested by a few state leaders, and it is under consideration. But we have to look at many aspects and the final decision will be taken by the central leadership of the party,” said a senior BJP leader.
Sharma, the then BJP spokesperson, was suspended from the party in June 2022 after her controversial comments on the Prophet in May that year generated global outrage. The BJP had also issued a statement saying that it “strongly denounces insult of any religious personalities” and that it “does not promote such people or philosophy”. Sharma had regretted her remark in a post on social media.
Since her suspension from the party, Sharma has maintained a low profile and only made a rare public appearance during a procession taken out before the pran pratishtha at Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir this January.
Sharma hails from Delhi, where she studied economics at Delhi University’s Hindu College, law at the university’s Faculty of Law and then undertook further studies at the London School of Economics.
Initially part of the Delhi BJP’s media team, Sharma became the national spokesperson of the party in 2020. Prior to that, she had unsuccessfully contested against AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal from New Delhi assembly constituency in 2015. She had secured over 25,000 votes, but lost to Kejriwal by over 31,000 votes.
The Rae Bareli seat of UP has been a Nehru-Gandhi family pocket borough for many decades. It has been represented in the Lok Sabha by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, politician-columnist Arun Nehru, Congress leader Satish Sharma, and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi (since 2004). Sonia had announced her decision to retire from electoral politics in February, choosing to enter the Rajya Sabha.
“It is a Brahmin-dominated seat but the leadership here has always been of Thakurs. The Brahmin vote has always gone to the Congress and Gandhi family. The Brahmin vote constitutes around 4-4.5 lakh (15-16 percent). If the BJP wants to win this seat, it needs to field a Brahmin candidate. It is because of this that names like Nupur Sharma, Kumar Vishwas (former AAP leader), Manoj Pandey (disgruntled SP leader), Dinesh Singh (MLC) and Dinesh Sharma (former UP deputy chief minister) are being discussed,” a senior BJP functionary told ThePrint.
“If we look at how the ticket distribution has been so far, I don’t think PM (Narendra) Modi will field a candidate who has been controversial and has made such statements. For this seat, a final decision will be taken by the PM and Home Minister Amit Shah.”
Hero Bajpai, Uttar Pradesh BJP spokesperson, too said that Rae Bareli “is a high-profile seat and Sonia Gandhiji apna boriya bistar le kar chali gayin hain (has packed up and moved on)”.
“The BJP will field a candidate who will work for the people of Rae Bareli in the true sense,” he added.
Key players in Rae Bareli
According to BJP leaders, Rae Bareli politics involves three key players — Aditi Singh, daughter of late Congress leader Akhilesh Singh, Dinesh Pratap Singh, an MLC who is currently a minister in Yogi Adityanath-led UP government, and Manoj Pandey, an MLA who resigned as chief whip of the SP last month, ahead of the Rajya Sabha election.
Aditi Singh, who represents the Rae Bareli Sadar assembly seat, was first elected to the UP assembly in 2017 on a Congress ticket. She was once considered a close aide of the Gandhi family as she belongs to Rae Bareli. Her family has held the seat for nearly three decades, but things turned bitter between her and the Congress after her father’s death in 2019. She joined the BJP in 2021.
Manoj Pandey, a three-time MLA from Unchahar that falls under Rae Bareli parliamentary seat, had briefly joined the BJP in the early 2000s but returned to the SP later. He is, however, likely to join the BJP again.
Dinesh Singh had contested from Rae Bareli in 2019 but lost to Sonia Gandhi.
A second BJP leader told ThePrint: “A significant issue is that if the BJP fields any of these leaders, the others may not cooperate. Hence, the idea of getting an outsider to contest from here (Rae Bareli) was floated.”
“Dinesh Singh who had joined the BJP from the Congress is currently a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government. Considering that his entry into the party was done through the central leadership, he has a good chance too,” he added.
Apart from Dinesh Singh, the name of Dinesh Sharma, former deputy CM of UP and current Rajya Sabha member, is also said to be under consideration for a BJP ticket from Rae Bareli.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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