In 2019 Dhankhar was appointment as governor of West Bengal. He had a strained relationship with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for the past three years. She constantly accused him of interfering with government affairs.
Dhankhar, who was born on May 18, 1951, in the Jhunjhunu area of Rajasthan, attended a Sainik School before going on to practise law. He has worked for both the Supreme Court and the Rajasthan High Court. In 1989, Dhankhar was elected to Parliament on a Janata Dal platform after developing a close relationship with Jat politician Devi Lal. In the V.P. Singh administration, he was appointed minister of state for parliamentary affairs. On a Congress ticket, he won a seat in the state Assembly in 1993.
Ten years later, in 2003, Dhankhar changed sides and joined the BJP.
Being a Jat—a backward community in Rajasthan—his appointment as vice president is likely to send a positive political message for the BJP because few other Jats have held high office at the federal level, aside from former prime minister Charan Singh and former deputy prime minister Devi Lal.
Even though the Jats, a significant agrarian population in Haryana, Rajasthan, and western Uttar Pradesh, supported the BJP in significant numbers in the most recent two Lok Sabha elections compared to assembly elections in these states, the party has had tense relations with them.
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