BJP Fields Kamlesh Paswan For The Fourth Consecutive Term To The Lower House
Politician Kamlesh Paswan represents Bansgaon in India”s 17th Lok Sabha as a member of parliament. Paswan is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He has been elected to the Lok Sabha ‘thrice’ and BJP has given him the seat to contest for his fourth term in the lower house. Presently, the Bansgaon Lok Sabha constituency comprises five legislative assembly segments including Chauri-Chaura, Bansgaon, Chillpur, Rudrapur, and Barhai.
Kamlesh Paswan was born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, into a Pasi family. He studied at Gorakhpur”s St. Paul”s School and received an MA political science degree from Gorakhpur University.
Kamlesh Paswan started his politics with the Samajwadi Party. But, later joined BJP. As a candidate for the Samajwadi Party, Paswan represented the Maniram Vidhan Sabha seat. He joined the BJP in 2009, ran in the Lok Sabha elections, and was elected from the Bansgaon constituency to the 15th Lok Sabha. He later won again in the elections for 16th and 17th Lok Sabha. He was also a member of the committee on social justice and empowerment.
During his tenure, his attendance at the Lower House has been 87%. He participated in 10 debates including the issue of death during workouts in gyms, Bollywood drug cartels and gang rape, and brutal killing of girls among others.
Paswan was also not spared of political controversies. The local court in Gorakhpur sentenced BJP MP to one-and-half year imprisonment in a case lodged in 2008 for staging a protest. However, the Allahabad High Court granted bail to the sitting BJP MP from Bansgaon. Additionally, he became involved in controversy when Dr. Kafeel Khan, a suspended doctor from BRD, accused him of shooting his younger brother Kashif Jameel.
The BJP MP also wrote a letter to President Ram Nath Kovid that triggered a controversy over the caste of Maharaja Suheldev when Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for his memorial in Bahraich district of Uttar Pradesh. In his letter, he wrote that the legendary warrior-king was from a Pasi community (Dalit) instead of Rajbhar.
His brother Vimlesh Paswan has been MLA from Bansgaon Assembly twice. Kamlesh”s mother Shubhawati was also an elected MP from Bansgaon Lok Sabha from SP in 1996. His father, the late Om Prakash Paswan, was considered a strong leader of his time who had become MLA from Maniram constituency twice as an independent and once on SP ticket. His father was assassinated in 1996 while giving a speech.
As per the estimates of the 2011 census, Bansgaon has 94.28% rural and 5.72% urban population. Out of the total population, the ratios for Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Scheduled Castes (SC) are 1.33 and 22.75, respectively. In 2019, the BJP and the BSP got 56.41% and 40.57% votes, respectively, in parliamentary election, while in 2014, BJP, the BSP, the INC, and the SP got 47.61%, 26.02%, 5.77%, and 15.23% respectively.
