Ritesh Pandey: From BSP To BJP; A Young Parliamentarian's Political Journey(image: twitter.com/mpriteshpandey)

Ritesh Pandey, the sitting BSP MP, joined the BJP in February of this year. Ahead of the general elections, he made the big ticket switchover by quitting and giving a massive blow to the Mayawati-led party.

He is currently representing Uttar Pradesh”s Ambedkar Nagar constituency. In the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, the 42-year-old will be representing the same constituency but under a BJP ticket.

In the 2019 elections, Ritesh Pandey defeated the BJP”s Mukut Bihari by a margin of 95,880 votes. Before this, in the assembly elections of 2017, he was elected as a MLA from the Jalalpur constituency. Though he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he was defeated by BJP candidate Hari Om Pandey by a margin of 1,39,429 votes.

Ritesh Pandey served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Papers Laid on the Table of the House. In January 2020, he was appointed as the leader of the BSP in the Lok Sabha, becoming one of the youngest MP”s to lead a major national party in Parliament. As an MP, Pandey was vocal about his party”s positions on various issues in parliament.

A prominent parliamentarian, he has been an active member of multiple parliamentary committees, including the Standing Committee on External Affairs, the Joint Parliamentary Committee to examine the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Biological Diversity (Amendment) Bill, 2021.

Pandey has been ranked 19th in the Parliamentary Business Survey among 539 MPs in the country. Besides, he is also the youngest MP to appear in the Top 20.

For Ritesh Pandey, the political landscape is not an alien territory. His father, Rakesh Pandey, is a Samajwadi Party MLA in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. Earlier, his father represented Ambedkar Nagar Lok constituency as a BSP MP.