Nupur Sharma is an Indian politician. She was the national spokesperson of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) until June 2022. Described as brash and articulate, she frequently represented BJP on Indian television debates as an official spokesperson. In June 2022, she was suspended from the party due to her comments about the Islamic prophet Muhammad and the age of his third wife, Aisha, at the time of their marriage and the consummation of the marriage.

Early life and education

Nupur Sharma was born in New Delhi in 1985. She comes from a family of civil servants and businessmen. Her mother is from Dehradun.

Sharma studied in the Delhi Public School, Mathura Road. Later she graduated from the Hindu College at Delhi University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics. She later completed her Bachelor of Laws at Delhi University. While a student, she had joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Sangh Parivar, and won the presidency of the Delhi University Students Union in 2008, breaking an eight-year-long dry spell for the ABVP. A notable incident during her stint was the leading of an ABVP mob to heckle S. A. R. Geelani in a faculty seminar on 'Communalism, Fascism and Democracy: Rhetoric and Reality'. She appeared on a television show later that night and gave brash responses.

After receiving a Master of Laws degree from the London School of Economics at the University of London, Sharma became a lawyer.

Political career

Sharma became a worker of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after returning from London in 2010–2011. In 2013, she became a member of the Delhi BJP's working committee. She is said to have worked with senior leaders like Arvind Pradhan, Arun Jaitley and Amit Shah. In 2015, at age 30, she was given the ticket for contesting against Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the 2015 Delhi Legislative Assembly election. She lost the contest by 31,000 votes.

Afterwards, she was appointed as an official spokesperson for the BJP's Delhi unit under Manoj Tiwari. In 2020, she was appointed as a national spokesperson of BJP under the presidency of J. P. Nadda. According to a Delhi BJP leader, even when she was part of the Delhi unit, she was often sent out for TV debates on national issues because of her legal acumen, sound knowledge of national issues, and bilingual skills. She was seen as young, energetic and brash, with regular appearances on television debates. She is recorded to have made several insulting comments on opposing panellists, causing outrage on twitter.