Congress MP in Uttar Pradesh arrested in rape case: Who is Rakesh Rathore?

Ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls, Rathore joined the BJP and won Sitapur for the party, ending Jaiswal’s winning run. However, his relationship with the party started souring two years later.

“He started making comments against the BJP organisation and Yogi Adityanath government. The party stopped inviting him to organisational meetings. When he targeted the BJP government on Covid-19 management in May 2021, it became clear that the party would not repeatedly give him a ticket in the 2022 polls,” said a BJP leader in Sitapur. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Rathore expressed concerns about pandemic management in the state and said he feared he would be charged with sedition for speaking up.

Sensing that the BJP was not willing to field him in the 2022 Assembly polls, Rathored jumped ship to the SP along with several other prominent OBC leaders. Before leaving, he fired a parting shot at the BJP saying it was working with an “upper-caste mindset”.

But it did not work out as planned. The SP leadership denied him a ticket from Sitapur in the 2022 Assembly polls. The BJP fielded his namesake, Rakesh Rathore “Guru”, from Sitapur. Guru who is from the Teli caste ended up defeating SP’s Jaiswal to wrest control of the constituency. Guru was subsequently inducted into the government as Minister of State for Urban Development, Urban Employment, and Poverty Alleviation. “Guru was given a ticket because the party wanted to groom an OBC leader from the Teli community here,” said a BJP leader.

He still stuck around in the SP and demanded a party ticket in the Sitapur Nagar Palika chairman elections the following year. Rebuffed once more, Rathore quit the party and joined the Congress in June 2023. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, in which the Congress and the SP contested in an alliance, the former fielded him from Sitapur despite opposition from the local SP unit.

This time, Rathore managed to win, defeating the BJP’s Rajesh Verma by 89,641 votes amid a consolidation of the Scheduled Caste Pasi and Muslim votes. It was Verma who had helped Rathore get his first Assembly election ticket from BSP in 2007 and from the BJP in 2017, sources said. Verma was the BSP’s Sitapur MP at the time of the 2007 Assembly polls and the BJP MP in 2017.

Weeks after the Lok Sabha polls, Rathore left the Congress red-faced when he wrote to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge, accusing party colleague Sanjay Dixit of casteism and humiliating him. Rathore alleged he was “pushed” and “humiliated” by Dixit, who works in the Congress’s “war room” in UP.

“Rathore belongs to the Teli caste who are small in number in the entire constituency. The Pasi community in 2024 backed the SP and the Congress, especially on the narrative around the Constitution. The Pasi community in Sitapur is about seven lakh, the highest among SCs in the constituency. Their support to the alliance helped Rathore become an MP,” said a Congress leader.
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Rathore formed the “Tailik Mahasangh” after he became the Sitapur MLA in 2017 to spread social and political awareness among the Teli community. At present, the organisation is present in nearly 30 districts of Uttar Pradesh. A source said the woman who accused Rathore of too had served as a functionary in the Tailik Mahasangh. An FIR was registered against Rathore on January 17 after the complainant accused him of rape on the ground of false promise of marriage. The MP was arrested after the Allahabad High Court on Wednesday rejected his anticipatory bail application.