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Bikaner
Bikaner
Walled desert city founded in 1488 by Rao Bika; capital of Bikaner State until 1947.
Karni Singhji
Twenty-third and last titular Maharaja of Bikaner, 1950–1971. An Olympic shooter for India at five Games and a long-serving independent member of the Lok Sabha for Bikaner.
p>Karni Singh succeeded his father Sadul Singh in 1950 and inherited a title rather than a kingdom. Bikaner had acceded to India on 7 August 1947 and merged into Greater Rajasthan on 30 March 1949; what remained to the house was the style of Maharaja, a privy purse, and the palaces.</p><p>Those went too. The Twenty-sixth Amendment abolished the privy purses and the recognition of princely titles in 1971, ending 506 years of the Bikaner rulership as a legal institution. Karni Singh remained head of the family until his death in 1988.</p><p>He is the last man to hold the title that Rao Bika created by riding out of Jodhpur in 1465, and his career is the clearest measure of what changed: his ancestors ruled by descent, and he held public office by election.</p>
p>Karni Singh made his own reputation with a rifle. He represented India in shooting at five consecutive Olympic Games and won the Arjuna Award, India's national honour for outstanding sportsmen — a genuine international sporting career rather than a princely hobby.</p><p>He also stood for election. He won the Bikaner seat in the Lok Sabha as an independent and held it across five terms and more than two decades, sitting through the same period in which the privy purses were abolished. That an ex-ruler could be repeatedly returned by the voters of his former state, as an independent rather than on a party ticket, says something about how the transition was actually absorbed in Bikaner.</p>
p>Wikipedia, 'Bikaner State' regnal list, which gives him as titular Maharaja 1950–1971 and family head 1971–1988, and notes the withdrawal of the privy purses and titles in 1971.</p><p><strong>Note.</strong> Exact birth and death dates were not verified in this pass and are recorded with year-level approximation from the genealogical sequence (1924–1988). The number of Olympic appearances and Lok Sabha terms is as given in the general sources and has not been checked against an official record. No Wikidata item confirmed; local QID minted pending verification. This record is the least thoroughly sourced in the Bikaner sequence and should be revisited.</p>
Significance · REGIONAL
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