Dhananjay Singh is an Indian politician who served as the MLA for Rari constituency,

Jaunpur district Jaunpur district is a district in the Varanasi Division of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The district headquarters is Jaunpur which is situated on the banks of the Gomti River. It is located 228 km southeast of the state capital Luc ...

in the

Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly The Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly (Hindi: ''Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Sabha'') is the lower house of the bicameral legislature of Uttar Pradesh. There are 403 seats in the house filled by direct election using a single-member first-past-the- ...

from 2002 to 2009 as an independent candidate. He was Member of Parliament (MP) in the

15th Lok Sabha Members of the 15th Lok Sabha were elected during the 2009 general election in India. It was dissolved on 18 May 2014 by President Pranab Mukherjee. Indian National Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 44 more seats than the previou ...

from 2009 to 2014 as a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) member. Dhananjay Singh has drawn scrutiny for his alleged corruption and involvement in many cases, and has been described as a ''

Purvanchal Purvanchal () is a subregion of the Bhojpuri region of India which comprises eastern Uttar Pradesh. Purvanchal region gained independence from the Avadh and Mughal rule under Zamindar Balwant Singh, a Bhumihar zamindar from Benaras State. I ...

Bahubali'' politician and Mafia Don.

Early life and career

Dhananjay Singh was born in Jaunpur on 16 July 1975 in a

Rajput Rajput (from Sanskrit ''raja-putra'' 'son of a king') is a large multi-component cluster of castes, kin bodies, and local groups, sharing social status and ideology of genealogical descent originating from the Indian subcontinent. The term Ra ...

family. According to the Lok Sabha, he is also involved in business and farming. He first became known as a student activist when he attended Tilak Dhari (TD) College in Jaunpur. In the late 1990s, he studied at

Lucknow University The University of Lucknow (informally known as Lucknow University, and LU) is a public state university based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. Founded in 1920, the University of Lucknow is one of the oldest government owned institutions of higher edu ...

and graduated with a master's in political science, and also started gaining notoriety around this time for his involvement in gang activity. His opposition to the

Mandal Commission The ''Mandal Commission'' or the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission (SEBC), was established in India in 1979 by the Janata Party government under Prime Minister Morarji Desai with a mandate to "identify the socially or educa ...

recommendations increased his political popularity. Between 1996 and 2013, Singh had been charged four times under the Gangster Act. By 2022, he had been the subject of three dozen criminal cases, with ten still pending and others being dismissed or acquired, partially due to witnesses who later backed out. In October 1998, it was claimed by police that they killed Singh in an

encounter Encounter or Encounters may refer to: Film *''Encounter'', a 1997 Indian film by Nimmala Shankar * ''Encounter'' (2013 film), a Bengali film * ''Encounter'' (2018 film), an American sci-fi film * ''Encounter'' (2021 film), a British sci-fi film * ...

Bhadohi Bhadohi is a city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It is home to the largest hand-knotted carpet weaving industry hub in South Asia. The city is 45 km west of Varanasi and 82 km east of Allahabad. Demographics As of 2011 Indi ...

while he was robbing a petrol pump. However, he appeared in public alive four months later, leading to an investigation that filed cases on up to 34 officers for the false claim.

Personal life

Singh married his first wife, Meenu, on 12 December 2006. She died ten months later on 12 September 2007. Family members claimed that she committed suicide. He married his second wife, Dr. Jagriti Singh, on 29 June 2009. After mutual disagreement, they separated and he married his third wife, Srikala Reddy, a BJP politician, in 2017. She won the Jaunpur zila panchayat (district council) chairperson poll in July 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Singh, Dhananjay Living people Bahujan Samaj Party politicians from Uttar Pradesh 1975 births