BJP fields former IAS officer as its candidate for UP MLC elections

A day after joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former Gujarat cadre Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Arvind Kumar Sharma was on Friday named by the party as one of its four candidates for the biennial elections to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. The biennial elections to 12 seats of the Council will be held on January 28.

“The central election committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party has approved the names of Swatantra Dev Singh, Dr Dinesh Sharma, Laxman Prasad Acharya and Arvind Kumar Sharma as candidates for the upcoming biennial election for the Legislative Council in UP,” read a release issued by the BJP, according to news agency ANI.

State BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh, deputy chief minister Dinesh Sharma and the party’s state unit vice-president Laxaman Prasad Acharya are sitting members of the Council. Their term, along with that of nine other members belonging to other political parties, ends on January 30.

On Thursday, Sharma had joined the party after taking voluntary retirement from service earlier this week. He was due to retire in July 2022.

“Certainly, the party has some big plans for Sharma. It will be naïve to believe that he sought VRS from the country’s elite service, when he still had about two years to retire, just to become an MLC,” said a senior BJP leader who did not wish to be named.

Sharma, a 1988 batch ex-IAS officer, was moved to the Prime Minister’s Office after Narendra Modi became Prime Minister in 2014.