Surprising everyone, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday picked its first-time MLA Bhajanlal Sharma as Rajasthan Chief Minister. Along with Sharma, the saffron camp named Diya Kumari and Prem Chand Bairwa as the Deputy Chief Ministers of the state. Princess Diya Kumari, whose name was consistently in the news, sworn in as Sharma’s deputy on Friday, December 15.
She has been seen as the “next Vasundhara Raje” in Rajasthan from the beginning of the electoral campaign season. The similarities are uncanny — both women leaders, both hail from royal families of Rajasthan, and both have connections to Rajputs who influenced results in 85 Assembly constituencies in the desert state this time. But if politics is about perception, there have been enough indications that made many question whether the BJP was pushing the 55-year-old princess to occupy the ‘royal’ seat in Rajasthan’s power circles, replacing Vasundhara Raje Scindia, now 70 years old. With Tuesday’s announcement, it has become clear — at least this one was not just mere speculation.
Diya Kumari is the granddaughter of Man Singh II, the last ruling Maharaja of Jaipur during the British Raj in India. She is a princess of Jaipur and the mother of the current Maharaja, Padmanabh Singh. Going against tradition, she married a commoner, Narendra Singh, in 1997. However, they got divorced in 2019. The BJP chose to field her from Vidyadhar Nagar, a seat from Jaipur city itself, which she won with more than 71,000 votes — a massive mandate in terms of the Assembly election.
A London graduate who completed her PhD in Philosophy and graduated in Decorative Arts, the Indian billionaire manages the Jaigarh Fort in Amber, two trusts — Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum Trust, Jaipur, and the Jaigarh Public Charitable Trust— as well as two schools and three hotels.
In 2013, when the country was inching towards a monumental change with Narendra Modi’s arrival on the national scene, Diya Kumari ventured into politics. She joined the BJP before a massive crowd of lakhs, in the presence of Modi, who was Gujarat’s chief minister at the time, and Vasundhara Raje, at a rally in Jaipur — her home turf. She fought and won the assembly election from Sawai Madhopur, a Rajput-dominated seat, instead of Jaipur whose caste calculus was more cosmopolitan. In 2019, she was elected from the Rajsamand Lok Sabha constituency.
In politics, small things are indicative of what is to come. During the early days of the BJP’s 2023 Rajasthan campaign, something happened that was a giveaway that Kumari’s stature was going up. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi went to Jaipur on the occasion of the completion of the Parivartan Sankalp Yatra, it was Diya Kumari — someone associated with the BJP for barely a decade — who was entrusted with the job of coordination on stage. Such responsibilities for a Modi rally are generally given to one of the senior-most or supremely trusted leaders of the party.
A lingering question that has been around in Jaipur’s power corridors is will Raje be to Diya Kumari what Bhairon Singh Shekhawat was to Raje? The way BJP’s legislature party meeting went on Tuesday, it was clear that Raje wouldn’t be a roadblock.
In a state where royalty is still looked up to and commands respect, it seems the BJP has found a new ‘princess’ — part of the next-gen to lead the desert state.
**This article was originally published on December 12, 2023. It was updated and republished after the swearing-in of Rajasthan CM Bhajanlal Sharma and deputy CMs Prem Chand Bairwa and Diya Kumari.**
