Awadhesh Prasad

Awadhesh Prasad (born 31 July 1945) is an Indian politician serving as the Lok Sabha Member of Parliament from Faizabad and a founding member of the Samajwadi Party (SP). He is presently the general secretary of the national executive of SP and he was a member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly till 4 June 2024 when he was elected as an MP. He has been a nine time MLA elected from the erstwhile Sohawal (SC) constituency in 1977, 1985, 1989, 1993, 1996, 2002 and 2007 and as of latest from Milkipur (SC) in 2012 and 2022. He has become a minister for six times in the Government of Uttar Pradesh and been a cabinet minister in four of them.

Political career
Prasad, who comes from Pasi Dalit community, began his political career at the age of 21. He was the Ayodhya district co-convener of the anti-Emergency Sangarsh Samiti. He was also the polling agent of the Lok Dal at Amethi during the 1977 Indian general election. He became the national secretary and was inducted into the central parliamentary board when the Samajwadi Party was founded in 1992. In the party, he has generally functioned as an organisation man since then.

He became minister in the Janata Party governments of Ram Naresh Yadav and Babu Banarasi Das and in the Samajwadi Party governments of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav. He has a close association with the party president Akhilesh Yadav and was one of the few veteran leaders to have sided with him during the pre-2017 election leadership contest within the party.

In the 2024 Indian general election Prasad won as the Member of Parliament from the Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency. This win has been seen as of deep interest within the 2024 Indian general election because it encompasses the city of Ayodhya where resides the Ram Temple which was set-up in the previous term (2019-2024). Analysts credited his win to failure of BJP's Abki Baar 400 Paar slogan and Samajwadi Party's strategy of leveraging caste and religion by capitalizing on the significant OBC voter base, including Kurmis and Yadavs, aligning OBCs (22%), Dalits (21%), and Muslims (18%) to edge out the BJP.