Rakesh Rathore

Rakesh Rathore is an Indian politician, member of the Indian National Congress. He is currently serving as a Member of Parliament from the Lok Sabha seat of Sitapur. He was member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly from Sitapur Assembly constituency.

Career
He was elected from Sitapur in the 2017 election as the candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In May 2021, several audio clips of his private conversations were leaked in which he was being severely critical of the government, especially on the Coronavirus pandemic response and also complaining about a casteist orientation within the party. After the leak, he explained that he had tried to raise various issues with the government, giving the example of a trauma center in his city Sitapur that was built only on paper but that they don't really listen to ordinary MLAs. He also said that he couldn't speak much anymore after the leak because he had been put under threat of sedition charges if he spoke too much. It was seen that he was regularly pestered by the police after the incident.

In 2022, he joined Congress. According to him, all of BJP's policies were against the common man, that he had once been raising his voice inside the party for the people's issues but to no avail. He said that he had joined Congress because if there was any person fighting for the people of India, it was actually Rahul Gandhi who must be strengthened and that only when the country and the Constitution are saved, only then will they all be saved and not by bending to the BJP.

In the 2022 election in UP, he was replaced by the BJP by a car mechanic with the same name as him to contest on the Sitapur seat who was later made a minister of state after the BJP won. He did not contest the election himself. In the 2024 Indian general election, Rakesh Rathore was declared the Congress candidate from Lok Sabha seat of Sitapur after the initial candidate Nakul Dubey who used to be the usual candidate from the seat and had joined the Congress leaving the Bahujan Samaj Party suddenly refused to contest the election. He won the election against the incumbent Rajesh Verma from the BJP by a margin of about 90,000.