Jagdeep Dhankhar’s meteoric rise: From a boy who walked 4-5 km to school to V-P of world’s largest democracy

Jagdeep Dhankhar resigned from his post as Vice President of India on Monday, citing health reasons and medical advice, just hours after he chaired the first day of the Monsoon session in the Rajya Sabha. In his resignation, Dhankhar expressed gratitude to President Droupadi Murmu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Union Cabinet of Ministers.
By tendering his resignation, Dhankhar became the seventh vice president to step down before completing the full five-year term.

Born on May 18, 1951, in Kithana village of Rajasthan’s Jhunjhunu district, Dhankhar had his early education from Class 1 to 5 in the village primary school. He then took admission in the Government Middle School, Ghardhana, 4-5 km away and walked to the school daily with other village students.

He then got admission to Chittorgarh Sainik School on a full merit scholarship and passed the Indian School Certificate Examination recognised by Cambridge University.

After his graduation and law, Dhankar got enrolled with the Bar Council of Rajasthan and began his professional career as an advocate in 1979. Ten years later, in 1989, he got elected to the 9th Lok Sabha from the Jhunjhunu Parliamentary Constituency and became Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs in 1990 in the Chandra Shekhar government.

Dhankar then got elected as an MLA from Rajasthan’s Kishangarh constituency in Ajmer in 1993.

He also served as Governor of West Bengal from 30 July 2019 to 18 July 2022.

Dhankhar won the election for Vice President as the NDA candidate by a record margin, polling 528 votes out of 710 as he defeated opposition candidate Margaret Alva in the August 6, 2022, election. It was the largest winning margin in a vice-presidential race since 1992.

He was designated as a Senior Advocate by the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan from March 27, 1990, and was practising primarily in the Supreme Court.

‘Parliament is supreme’

However, Dhankhar has been critical of the judiciary in recent times and asserted that “Parliament is supreme”. He criticised the Supreme Court for setting a timeline for the President and Governor to sign bills passed by state governments and said, “So, we have judges who will legislate, who will perform executive functions, who will act as a super Parliament and have absolutely no accountability because the law of the land does not apply to them.”

Dhankhar also said he hoped an FIR is registered with regard to the recovery of a stash of cash at a judge’s official residence in New Delhi in March. He said, “I am a concerned man. Whether this is an incident in isolation or there are other similar incidents.”

“I do hope an FIR will be registered. We must go to the root of the matter. Our judiciary, in which people’s faith is unshakable, its very foundations have been shaken.”

Dhankhar said equality before the law means every crime must be investigated. “If the money is so huge in volume, we have to find out: is it tainted money? What is the source of this money? How was it stocked in the official residence of a judge? It belonged to whom?”

“So far, there has been no FIR. The government at the central level is handicapped because an FIR cannot be registered in view of a judgment of the Supreme Court rendered in the early ’90s,” he added.