Raghuraj Pratap Singh
Raghuraj Pratap Singh,, commonly known as Raja Bhaiya, is an Indian politician, currently serving as a Member of Legislative Assembly in the 18th Uttar Pradesh Assembly, representing the Kunda assembly constituency of Pratapgarh [Lok Sabha constituency|Pratapgarh]. He has been elected as an MLA for the seventh consecutive time since 1993 from the same constituency. In 2018, he founded and became the national president of Jansatta Dal Loktantrik party. Singh has held various Cabinet Minister positions in the Government of Uttar Pradesh of both Samajwadi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party administrations.
Early life and education
Raja Bhaiya was born on 31 October 1969 in Calcutta, West Bengal in a Rajput family. His father is Uday Pratap Singh and hails from the Bhadri (estate) of Oudh. His mother is Manjul Raje, daughter of last ruling Maharaja Radha Charan Singh of Samthar State and sister of six-term MLA Ranjeet Singh Judeo. His grandfather, Bajrang Bahadur Singh, served as the first vice-chancellor of Pant Nagar Agriculture University and subsequently as the second Lieutenant Governor of Himachal Pradesh state. Raghuraj was the first in his family to enter politics; his father is largely a recluse. Bajrang Bahadur Singh had no son, so he adopted his nephew Uday Pratap Singh as his son.He graduated from University of Lucknow in 1989. He married Bhanvi Kumari Singh on 15 February 1995, with whom he has two sons and two daughters. As per his election affidavit, Singh is an agriculturalist by profession.
Political career
In the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, he was overwhelmingly elected from Kunda with a margin of nearly half the votes cast over Shiv Prakash Mishra of the Bahujan Samaj Party. He had stood as an Independent.He also wields considerable influence over five assembly constituencies in the Pratapgarh region, as well as some in neighbouring Bihar. In election rallies in this region where he is present, the actual candidate may never speak or even be mentioned in his speech. After the 2007 elections, when Mayawati swept to power with a majority, Raghuraj again came under the police radar.
In the 2017 Assembly election, Raghuraj Pratap Singh defeated his opponent Janki Sharan from the Bhartiya Janata Party by a huge margin of 103,647 votes and acquired 136,597 votes in total. In November 2018, Singh launched his own party, the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik.
In 2005, he became the minister for Food and Civil Supplies, and despite his pending criminal cases, he came to be assigned the highest level of security provided by the state, though the threats against him were not specified. In 2018, he voted for the Bharatiya Janta Party in the Rajya Sabha polls against the BSP candidate Bhimrao Ambedkar.
In 2019, his party contested the Lok Sabha polls alone on two seats of Pratapgarh and Kaushambi.
In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, Singh representing Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik) defeated Samajwadi Party's Gulshan Yadav of the Samajwadi Party by a margin of 30,315 votes, acquiring a total of 99,612. Singh has consecutively been elected as the representative of Kunda assembly for the seventh time in 2022.