It is widely believed that in addition to seniority and the right political background, Ms Sharma shines on her own as a clean and efficient officer. 

It is after 10 years that she is returning to her state cadre after serving at the Centre from 21 May 2012.

She will be the second woman Chief Secretary after Ms. Kushal Singh who was made the first woman CS by the then CM Ashok Gehlot during his second term as CM.

Indianmandarins had on December 26, 2021, reported that the 1985-batch IAS officer and Union Secretary (Youth Affairs) Ms. Usha Sharma could be the obvious choice as the next chief secretary of the state for Rajasthan's Gehlot administration.

A native of Uttar Pradesh Ms. Sharma is a Science Graduate in Chemistry. She joined IAS in 1985 and was allotted Tripura Cadre where she served as Assistant Collector, Deputy Secretary, and SDO till April 1989. Later she was allotted Rajasthan cadre and did her first stint in the Municipal Administration in Alwar (Rajasthan) beginning July 01, 1989.

She became District Collector and District Magistrate of Bundi District in January 1994 and later became DM Ajmer in October 1999 and served in Ajmer till August 2001.

In addition to her stint in field/districts (Bundi & Ajmer), she has wide and varied experience in education, power/energy, cooperative, handloom & handicrafts, industries. In addition, she also headed the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) as Commissioner during 2003-2004.

Prior to moving to the Centre in May 2012, she had a long stint in the state department of Tourism and Culture.

At the central government, she started her career as Joint Secretary. Initially, she served as DG (Tourism) and later as Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Personnel, Ministry of Culture (DG, Archaeological Survey of India), and finally Union Secretary for Youth Affairs.

Her career witnessed many ups and downs like most of her colleagues.

She is said to have remained out of the most favored list of NDA administration officials. Despite her eligibility and being the youngest officer in her batch (1985), she was made a full Secretary two and half years after her batchmates.

She was first empaneled for holding Secretary Equivalent posts at Centre in May 2017 and only two and a half years later in October 2019 empaneled for holding Secretary rank posts at Centre. It was only in February 2020 she got the full-fledged Secretary level posting as Union Secretary for Youth Affairs. 

Her appointment as the new CS will signal that the state administration is back to the time-tested principle of seniority in the appointment of the top civil servant of the state after having strayed from this path while appointing Arya as the state’s first ‘Dalit’ Chief Secretary of the state in November 2020 in the hope of consolidating his Dalit vote bank. That’s the beauty of a democratic framework of governance and administration.

Further, it is worth underlining that Ms Sharma as the new head of the state bureaucracy may also signal a sort of rapprochement between the CM and state assembly speaker CP Joshi whose kinship with Ms. Sharma is well known.

In June 2023 when Ms. Sharma may bid farewell to her colleagues, opportunities for the 1988-batch officer Subodh Agarwal may open up as the age is on his side in addition to the skills all politicians love among their officers. His service tenure may last till December 2025. In addition to Agarwal, there will also be 1989 batch officers like Ms. Shubhra Singh, Rohit Kumar Singh, and V Sriniwas for consideration as CS candidates if the state administration for some reason desires to bypass Agarwal.