On December 12, as Rajasthan BJP MLAs quietly walked into the party’s office in Jaipur for the legislative party meet to ‘elect’ the next chief minister, there were only a select few who knew who would actually become the CM.

In one of the videos that did the rounds, as Bhajan Lal Sharma walks by, someone calls out for him, saying “Bhaisaheb”, and Sharma slows down to look in the direction of the voice, towards the camera. Just then, a person who has been following Sharma, quickly comes up from behind him and gently holds his arm, whisking him away, taking even Sharma by surprise.

Over the next hour, as Sharma was ‘elected’ the CM, the significance of the person who took him away became clear — it was the behind-the-scenes operator Chandrashekhar, the BJP general secretary (organisation).

On January 15, with the successful Rajasthan campaign under his belt where he oversaw power passing hands to a new generation of leaders, Chandrashekhar was shifted by the Sangh Parivar to Telangana — a state where the BJP’s hopes of making quick inroads have been belied.

A native of Banda district in Uttar Pradesh, Chandrashekhar first rose within the RSS ranks to become a vibhag pracharak, and was active in his home state before moving on to a more political role in the BJP.

Working behind the curtains, he made his mark as an able organiser. What further boosted his profile was that during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he was the general secretary (organisation) with the BJP for Kashi region. This was the election in which Narendra Modi contested from the Varanasi Lok Sabha and went on to become the Prime Minister.

In August 2017, when he was appointed to Rajasthan, he was the general secretary (organisation-western region), with the Uttar Pradesh BJP. Chandrashekhar was chosen for Rajasthan apparently to try and improve relations between the government, the party’s state unit — then in the firm grasp of sitting Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and the Sangh. Before Chandrashekhar took over, the post had been vacant for about eight years, amid poor relations between Raje and the Sangh.

Incidentally, at the time Chandrashekhar was moved to Rajasthan, Bhajan Lal was also a general secretary in the state BJP. Brought together by virtue of their positions, the two came to often be seen together.

At a “Sankalp se Siddhi” workshop in Jaipur in February 2018, for example, Chandrashekhar and Sharma were the chief speakers. Then, when former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away on August 16, 2018, the two officially accompanied party state president Madan Lal Saini to Jaipur to pay respects on behalf of the party’s state unit.

While the party lost the Rajasthan Assembly elections later that year, it won all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, repeating its 2014 figures.

Between 2018 and 2023, Chandrashekhar was one of the leaders instrumental in helping the BJP central leadership take over full control of the state unit, putting an end to the era of strong party leaders from Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to now Vasundhara Raje. Chandrashekhar is also said to have been behind the move to replace Satish Poonia with C P Joshi as party’s state president, and is believed to have backed Sharma as CM.

At the same time, over the last six years, Chandrashekhar earned quite a few detractors in the party’s state unit, a list that grew further during the Assembly elections last year. Accusing Chandrashekhar of “improprieties and irregularities” during the polls and in the months leading up to them, a party leader said: “The party was hoping for better results but due to ‘irregularities’ in ticket distribution, we could only reach 115 seats.”

So when the news of his relocation to Telangana arrived, there were some happy faces in the Rajasthan unit.

But some others see his role as having been crucial and “gutsy” in enforcing the epoch change in the party’s state unit, and thus the decision to send him to Telangana where the party stood a distant third in the recent elections. “He has proved his mettle, so he’s being sent to Telangana where a bigger challenge awaits him,” a party leader said.

Having delivered Rajasthan, and perhaps quite aware of the opposition from some quarters in that state, Chandrashekhar reportedly himself sought a fresh assignment. About three days later after this was reported, he was shifted to Telangana.