IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Biography: Age, Wife, Prayagraj, Current Posting and UPSC Rank

What makes Sharma’s story compelling even before he joined the police is the professional life he left behind to do so. He was not a career civil services aspirant from the beginning. He trained and qualified as a dental surgeon, earning his Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from Government Medical College, Patiala in Punjab, a rigorous medical programme that takes five years to complete and demands considerable academic commitment. He practiced dentistry briefly, but by November 2008, something shifted. He later explained in interviews that he felt the reach of his work as a doctor was limited to the individuals sitting in his chair, and that he wanted to do something that could change the lives of an entire community. He quit dentistry, began preparing for the UPSC Civil Services Examination, and did not look back.

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His first attempt at the UPSC cleared the written examination in 2009, but he did not make it through the personality interview and was not selected that year. He returned the following year with intensified preparation and in his second attempt secured an All India Rank of 160, earning a place in the Indian Police Service. His probationary training placed him in Saharanpur, and from there his career progressed steadily through increasingly demanding postings across Uttar Pradesh.

Over the course of his service, Sharma worked as SP and SSP across five districts, namely Shamli, Hathras, Noida, Jaunpur, and Rampur, each presenting its own set of law and order challenges. His tenure in Jaunpur became particularly notable, with reports indicating that he oversaw approximately 136 encounters over a period of just 22 months as SP. His posting in Rampur in 2018 brought him his first major wave of national attention when he chased down a suspect accused of raping and killing a six-year-old girl, an operation that ended in the suspect’s capture and earned Sharma a public commendation from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath that same year.

His career has not been without turbulence. In 2020, the Uttar Pradesh Vigilance Department investigated phone recordings that raised questions about his conduct in relation to postings and transfers, and he was temporarily moved to the Police Training Centre in Unnao. A separate allegation of a secret marriage was made against him, denied firmly by Sharma and subsequently refuted by the Marriage Registration Office in Ghaziabad, which confirmed no such marriage existed in its records.

In April 2026, Sharma was deployed by the Election Commission of India as a police observer for South 24 Parganas in West Bengal ahead of the second phase of state assembly elections. A video of him warning the family members of a TMC candidate against voter intimidation went viral, drawing fierce criticism from opposition leaders and enthusiastic praise from BJP supporters, confirming his status as one of the most recognised and polarising IPS officers in the country.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Brother

Ajay Pal Sharma comes from a family in which academic excellence and professional ambition were deeply ingrained values. His younger brother, Amit Pal Sharma, followed a path that in many ways paralleled his own, beginning with a medical education before pivoting to the civil services. Amit completed an MBBS degree, qualifying as a medical doctor, before deciding that the civil services offered a broader platform through which to serve the country. He prepared for the UPSC Civil Services Examination and cleared it successfully, going on to become an IAS officer. Both brothers are currently serving in Uttar Pradesh, one in police administration and one in civil administration, making theirs one of the more remarkable sibling stories in the history of the Indian civil services.

Their father, Amarjit Pal Sharma, is a retired college professor from Ludhiana, and their mother, Prem Sharma, is a homemaker. The household they grew up in was shaped by education, discipline, and public service as a deeply held value. The fact that both sons chose to abandon established medical careers in favour of the more demanding world of civil administration reflects the strength of that family culture. Together, the Sharma brothers represent something genuinely inspiring, two individuals from the same modest background who each found their way into the most competitive administrative examinations in India and succeeded on their own terms.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Age

Ajay Pal Sharma was born on October 26, 1985, in Ludhiana, Punjab, which makes him 40 years old as of early 2026 and 41 years old from October 2026 onward. His zodiac sign is Scorpio, a detail his admirers on social media have noted with some amusement, suggesting that the sign’s traditional associations with intensity and determination are reasonably apt for a man of his professional temperament.

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He belongs to a generation of IPS officers who entered the service in the years immediately following the expansion of India’s urban policing infrastructure in the mid-2000s. He completed his BDS degree while in his early twenties, briefly practiced dentistry, cleared the UPSC in his mid-twenties, and received his first senior posting as an SSP at approximately 29 to 30 years of age in 2015. Reaching SSP rank within four years of joining the service reflects the pace at which his early career moved, and his progression from there to Additional Commissioner of Police in one of UP’s most significant urban centres by his early forties represents a career arc that few of his batch-mates have matched in public visibility or operational impact.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Wife

Ajay Pal Sharma is married to Aditi Sharma. The couple married in 2016 during the period when Sharma was posted as SP City in Ghaziabad. Aditi Sharma has maintained a notably low profile throughout her husband’s career, choosing to remain outside the public eye even as his name has periodically dominated news cycles. This is consistent with the approach of many IPS officers’ families, who recognise that the demands of a high-profile law enforcement career are best managed when the family retains a degree of privacy and personal stability.

Those familiar with the couple describe Aditi as a composed and grounded individual who has provided consistent personal support through a career that has required frequent relocations, long and unpredictable working hours, and the emotional weight of high-risk operations. The nature of Sharma’s postings, in districts with active criminal networks and in roles that have brought him into direct confrontations with organised crime, means that the personal cost of his professional life falls in no small part on his family.

In 2020, a separate woman named Dipti Sharma made a public claim of having married Ajay Pal Sharma in Ghaziabad in 2016. The claim was firmly denied by Sharma and was officially refuted by the Marriage Registration Office in Ghaziabad, which confirmed that no marriage between Ajay Pal Sharma and any woman named Dipti Sharma appeared in its records. The matter was investigated and the allegation found to be unsubstantiated.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Prayagraj

Prayagraj, the ancient city at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati rivers, is one of the most significant urban and religious centres in Uttar Pradesh, and managing law and order there requires an officer who can handle enormous scale, political sensitivity, and the intense demands of large public events simultaneously. Ajay Pal Sharma’s posting in Prayagraj as Additional Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, placed him in charge of precisely those responsibilities.

His role covered the full range of metropolitan policing, from daily crime control and administrative supervision of police stations to the management of security for the city’s major religious gatherings. Prayagraj hosts the Magh Mela annually and the Kumbh Mela and Mahakumbh on a larger cyclical schedule, events that draw tens of millions of pilgrims and present logistical and security challenges on a scale that few cities in the world regularly face. Sharma was involved in the security architecture for Mahakumbh 2025, one of the largest religious gatherings in human history, which drew an estimated 400 to 600 million visitors over its duration. Managing crowd movement, preventing crime, and coordinating across multiple security agencies at that scale required the kind of operational experience that Sharma had accumulated over his fifteen years in service.

His time in Prayagraj also reflected his characteristic approach to policing. He has been described as someone who makes it a practice to meet between 150 and 200 members of the public daily during his postings, listening to complaints and maintaining personal visibility in the communities he serves, rooted in his belief that public trust is the foundation of effective policing.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma Current Posting

As of April 2026, Ajay Pal Sharma is serving as Additional Commissioner of Police, Law and Order, in the Prayagraj Commissionerate, Uttar Pradesh. In addition to his regular responsibilities, he was deployed in April 2026 by the Election Commission of India as a Police Observer for South 24 Parganas district in West Bengal, ahead of the second phase of the state assembly elections on April 29, 2026.

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The Election Commission routinely deploys senior IPS officers from outside the state holding elections to serve as independent observers, a practice designed to ensure impartiality and firm enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct. Sharma’s selection for one of the most politically contested districts in West Bengal reflects the Commission’s assessment of his capacity to operate with firmness and independence in a challenging environment. His actions on the ground in South 24 Parganas, including publicly warning against voter intimidation in a video that circulated widely on social media, generated significant political controversy but were defended by the Election Commission and BJP leaders as lawful and appropriate conduct by a police observer. The Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party accused him of partisanship, while the BJP described his deployment as a guarantee of free and fair polling.

IPS Ajay Pal Sharma UPSC Rank

Ajay Pal Sharma cleared the UPSC Civil Services Examination in his second attempt, securing an All India Rank of 160. His first attempt in 2009 saw him clear the written examination but fall short at the personality interview stage, a setback that he used to sharpen his preparation. Returning in 2010, he cleared all stages and was selected for the Indian Police Service, subsequently allocated to the Uttar Pradesh cadre with the 2011 batch.

An AIR of 160 in the UPSC Civil Services Examination is a strong result by any standard. The examination attracts hundreds of thousands of applicants each year for a few hundred positions across the IAS, IPS, IFS, and allied services, and candidates ranked in the top 200 typically have considerable choice in service allocation. A rank of 160 placed Sharma comfortably within the IPS selection window and reflects the rigour of a preparation process that he undertook entirely through self-study, having returned from a coaching institute in Chandigarh within weeks of joining it, deciding that independent preparation suited him better.

His academic record prior to the examination was exceptional. He had topped Ludhiana in the plus-two medical stream, ranked among the top ten in Punjab at the matriculation level, and consistently placed in the top three within his BDS degree cohort at Government Medical College, Patiala. That level of academic consistency across years of study provided a strong foundation for the disciplined preparation that ultimately delivered his UPSC result, and it is a track record that makes his journey from dentist to IPS officer one of the more compelling personal narratives in the recent history of India’s civil services.