Ravi Kishan, an actor turned politician and BJP leader, leads from the Gorakhpur seat in Uttar Pradesh with 74,536 votes. Kishan is up against Bhojpuri film actress Kajal Nishad of the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) candidate Javed Simanani.
Gorakhpur went to the polls on June 1 in the seventh and last phase of the Lok Sabha elections.
After becoming a Lok Sabha seat in 1952, the Congress took over as it won the first of the eight elections. However, in 1984, the BJP took over the Gorakhpur seat. The constituency gained importance through Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath – whose hometown is Gorakhpur. He served as the MP from 1998 to 2017 from the Gorakhpur seat. However, it fell vacant after Yogi Adiyanath became the CM and was subsequently taken over by SP leader Praveen Nishad.
In 2019, Ravi Kishan won the Gorakhpur seat, defeating SP’s Rambhual Nishad by a margin of over three lakh votes.
Kishan began his political career by joining the Congress party in 2014. He contested the Lok Sabha election from the Jaunpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh on a Congress ticket, but lost to a BJP candidate. In 2017, Kishan left the grand old party and joined BJP.
Prior to his political journey, Kishan was an actor and a model. His film work is predominantly in Bhojpuri, Telugu, and Hindi cinema, but he also appeared in a few Kannada and Tamil films. In 2006, Kishan participated in Big Boss and ended up as the second runner-up. He was also awarded the Most Popular Actor award at the ETV Bhojpuri Cinema Samman 2008 function.
Later, in 2010, he hosted the two-season reality show Raaz Pichhle Janam Ka on NDTV Imagine and worked with film directors Shyam Benegal and Mani Ratnam. In 2012, Kishan also participated in ‘Jhalak Dikhla Jaa’ Season 5.
In 2013, Kishan was one of the judges on the reality TV show ‘Sales Ka Bazigar’, telecast on ETV.
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