S P Singh Baghel

It was, however, claimed by his BJP colleagues that Baghel, who is the MP from Uttar Pradesh’s Agra Lok Sabha constituency, generally avoids making controversial remarks against any community in public life.

On May 7, Baghel had offered “chaadar” on the Fatehpur Sikri dargah and had also attended a Qawwali programme there. On the same day, he took part in a “Bhagwat Katha” event, where he said it was “unfortunate” for the country that “Bhagwat Katha” was not in the academic syllabus despite the “Hindu sanatan dharm being followed by bahusankhyak (majority community)”.

For the second phase of the UP urban local body polls held on May 11, Baghel had undertaken a door-to-door canvassing in support of the BJP candidates in Hathras and Jalesar. He had also campaigned for the party candidates in Agra in the first phase of the civic polls held on May 4.

A former police officer, Baghel was part of the security team of the Samajwadi Party founder late Mulayam Singh Yadav when he was the UP CM. Later, he was brought into politics by Mulayam and was appointed as the president of Mulayam Singh Youth Brigade, one of the SP’s frontal organisations.

In the 1998 Lok Sabha election, Mulayam fielded Baghel from the Jalesar seat, which he won. He repeated the feat from the constituency in the 1999 and 2004 Lok Sabha polls on the SP ticket.

After the seat was scrapped in a delimitation exercise in 2008 and merged with Firozabad, the SP declined to field Baghel from the newly-demarcated Firozabad seat in the 2009 election, and instead gave the ticket to Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam’s son. Baghel then switched to the BSP and got its ticket to contest the Firozabad seat but lost to Akhilesh.

A year later, the BSP got Baghel elected to the Rajya Sabha with the party’s supremo Mayawati also appointing him as its national general secretary.

On March 1, 2014, a day before the BJP’s then PM candidate Modi held his rally in Lucknow, Baghel joined the party in the presence of Amit Shah, the BJP’s then UP in-charge. The saffron party fielded him in the 2014 general elections from Firozabad but he lost to SP candidate Akshay Yadav, son of Ram Gopal Yadav.

In 2015, the BJP appointed Baghel as the national president of its OBC Morcha.

Baghel won that election and was inducted into the Yogi Adityanath government as the Minister for Animal Husbandry, Fisheries, Minor Irrigation and Underground Water. He stepped down after getting elected to the Lok Sabha in 2019. In 2021, PM Modi inducted him into his ministry.

He went on to retain his his seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and also became the Minister of State for Panchayati Raj in the Modi-3 government.

In the 2022 UP Assembly polls, the BJP fielded Baghel against Akhilesh Yadav from Karhal, but he lost the election by 67,504 votes.