Chandrashekhar Azad (politician)

Chandrashekhar Azad (born 3 December 1986), also written as Chandra Shekhar Azad, an Indian social activist, Ambedkarite activist, politician and lawyer. He is serving as a Member of Parliament of the 18th Lok Sabha from Nagina since June 2024. He is the chief and co-founder of the Bhim Army, and the national president of the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram). In February 2021, Time magazine featured him in its annual list of 100 Emerging Leaders who are Shaping the Future.

Early life
Azad hails from the Chhutmalpur village of Saharanpur, Western Uttar Pradesh. His father Govardhan Das retired as a principal of a Government School. He came to prominence as a Bahujan leader after a hoarding titled The Great Chamars of Ghadkhauli Welcome You was installed by him on the outskirts of his village. Chandra Shekhar Azad started free coaching classes for all categories and distributed free books for poor students to study.

Activism and politics
Azad, Satish Kumar, and Vinay Ratan Singh founded Bhim Army in 2014, an organization that works for the emancipation of Dalits through education in India. It runs free schools for Dalits in western Uttar Pradesh.

In 2020, he founded the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).

During the 2022 UP legislative Assembly elections, he contested the Gorakhpur Urban Assembly constituency against Yogi Adityanath, with Azad getting 3.06% of the vote share.

In the 2024 Indian general election in Uttar Pradesh, Azad Samaj Party (ASP) candidate Chandrashekhar Azad won the Nagina Lok Sabha constituency by 1,51,473 votes. He got 5,12,552 votes. BJP's Om Kumar came second, who got 3,61,079 votes.

Imprisonment

 * He was arrested in relation to the Saharanpur violence incident. Azad was arrested under the National Security Act by the Uttar Pradesh Government. Afterwards he was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court after his lawyer argued that the arrests were politically motivated.


 * Delhi Police had denied permission to Chandrashekhar Azad's protest march against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act from Delhi Jama Masjid to Jantar Mantar. He entered into protest at Jama Masjid and was arrested by Delhi police and detained for several days.