india

Updated: May 31, 2019 18:08 IST

Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, 51, emerged as a giant killer in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, defeating Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot by 270,440 votes.

Gajju Bana, as he is popularly known, started his political career in student politics when he was elected in 1992 as president of the students’ union of Jai Narayan Vyas University in Jodhpur as an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) candidate.

In 2014, he got elected to the Lok Sabha when he defeated the Congress’s Chandresh Kumari by more than 400,000 votes.

In September 2017, he was inducted into the Union cabinet as junior agriculture minister. Before the 2018 assembly elections, the BJP central leadership wanted him to head the party’s state unit, but the suggestion was opposed by then chief minister Vasundhara Raje, leading to OBC leader Madan Lal Saini being made the state party president. A sports enthusiast, Shekhawat has had a long association with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and is considered an emerging Rajput leader .