Arvind Kumar Sharma
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
A profile
As Joint Secretary, PMO (new)
Being in IAS, he handles all key economic ministries from the PMO besides the linked issues of infrastructure, energy and environment.
He is shaping Modi's vision on the economic front, particularly infrastructure development. He gives direct instructions on these issues to ministers. His word is that of the PM's and is never questioned.
He is in charge of the PM's thrust areas, from skill development to climate change.
Close ties : Modi's most trusted bureaucrat, he understands the PM's mind like no one else.
As in 2021 June
Radhika Ramaseshan, June 10, 2019: The Times of India
Arvind Kumar Sharma holds the distinction of being the only Gujarat cadre IAS officer who was part and parcel of Narendra Modi’s charmed circle of bureaucrats in Modi’s 20-year journey from Gandhinagar to Delhi. Sharma served in the chief minister’s office during Modi’s tenure from 2001 till the first half of 2014 and moved to the Prime Minister’s Office where his last placement was as an additional secretary.
Call it a reward or a career change, in January 2021, Sharma, whose ancestral home is in east Uttar Pradesh’s Khaja Kurd village, quit the civil services and opted for politics in his state of birth, an ideal crucible for an aspiring politico. He was elected to the legislative council as a BJP nominee. Sharma’s arrival set off the speculation that big times awaited him in Lucknow, possibly as a deputy chief minister in the Yogi Adityanath cabinet. The chief minister, however, resisted shuffling his ministerial council so far because he fears that Sharma will be a troublemaker as a Modi surrogate in UP. With eight months to go for the elections, that’s the last thing a leader as self-professedly powerful as Adityanath wants.
Sharma is at the heart of the Modi-Adityanath face-off which was stoutly denied by the BJP but privately confirmed by party insiders who want the former IAS officer in the cabinet for various reasons. Adityanath has two BJP deputies under him but the opinion was Keshav Prasad Maurya and Dinesh Sharma couldn’t “assert” themselves against the CM’s alleged “high-handedness” and “high jinks”. Moreover, Maurya and Sharma were short of backing from Delhi’s brass that might have given the heft to challenge Adityanath. “The dynamics will change with Sharma. He will be the PM’s representative in Lucknow and can be expected to be interventionist and pro-active,” a BJP insider claims. Indeed, Sharma-as-deputy-CM is perceived as the second best option to replacing Adityanath that seems untenable now.
Sharma is not a political neophyte. He played a quasi political role in the Gandhinagar CMO. “He was the go-to person for the BJP’s MLAs, MPs and cadre. He heard them out and if possible, obliged them. The standing joke was if Modi didn’t want to indulge a person, that person would be asked to meet another CMO official without the powers and mandate that Sharma had,” a Gujarat BJP source says. A former Gujarat legislator says, “Sharma’s greatest quality was he second-guessed the boss (Modi) correctly. He never made mistakes on this score. Secondly, he never took credit for anything which of course endeared him to Modi.”
Sharma and Modi first met in 1995 when the former was the Mehsana district collector. Modi went through a rough patch at that time because he was asked to keep off Gujarat politics and allow Keshubhai Patel, then the CM, to function unhampered. There was a sense in Delhi that Modi was instigating dissidence against Patel, a former close associate. Nonetheless, the tete-a-tete with Sharma reportedly left a “lasting impression” on Modi.
For a long time, Sharma did not get a posting in Gandhinagar. In 1994, Chimanbhai Patel, then the CM, brought him to the central secretariat as an under-secretary but the tenure was brief and Sharma was back in the outback. The Gandhinagar assignment was noted for a reason that had nothing to do with Sharma’s work output. “He was the only officer to use a scooter when just about every IAS officer acquired a Maruti 800 to make a fashion statement, as it were,” a source recalls.
Once ensconced in Modi’s CMO in 2001, there was no looking back for Sharma. “He is a target-oriented person. Whether it was overseeing the Jyoti Gram Yojana (for rural electrification) or resolving the Narmada disputes, he delivered the results,” a BJP source says. Perhaps, Sharma’s toughest assignment was to rehabilitate Modi’s credentials and standing after the 2002 communal violence that reduced him to a persona non-grata in the western democracies. Indian industry was not exactly hospitable to him and for a while it appeared as though the perennially copious investments in Gujarat might taper off.
It fell on Sharma to set up the first two “Vibrant Gujarat” summits at Gandhinagar to repackage and sell the premier western state as an ideal investment destination to the corporate elite. “There was opposition to Modi from the who’s who of the Bombay and Bangalore Clubs but Sharma tirelessly refurbished the system using the ease-of-doing-business template. Road shows, seminars, networking with foreign countries through the BJP-friendly diaspora, single window clearances, Sharma stopped at nothing,” a source remembers. By the time Modi shifted to Delhi, the biennial summit, that went from being a low-key event to a jamboree, was a runaway success.
As Modi came close to realising his national ambitions, Sharma was handed out political briefs to make ground-level assessments of UP before Modi picked Varanasi as his Lok Sabha seat.
Sharma belongs to the Bhumihar caste, that ranks second in the pecking order after Brahmins and matters in parts of east and west UP. When he was nominated to the legislative council elections, his caste was also a consideration because the BJP does not have Bhumihar leaders of consequence. But Adityanath, a hard-core politician, has so far stymied the BJP’s Sharma blueprint and ensured the repository of power resides in the CMO.
A “god-fearing” person, Sharma carries his beads and a Shiva figurine on his travels and reads the “Hanuman Chalisa” in his leisure time. Politics? That’s another ball game, a tough-as-nails calling even for Sharma, who was partially groomed by the best in the business, Narendra Modi.
