Actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar is the Congress candidate for the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat. Mr Babbar is a three-time Lok Sabha member. The Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat will go to polls in the sixth phase on May 25.
Here are some facts about Raj Babbar
1. Raj Babbar was born on June 23, 1952, to Kushal Kumar Babbar, a Railways employee, and Shobha Babbar, in Agra. He studied at Mufid-e-Aam Inter College (then Agra College) and was active in student politics.
2. Despite his parents objecting to his acting ambitions, Raj Babbar left home and joined the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi. Two years after he graduated from the NSD, Mr Babbar made his debut in Bollywood and gained prominence with roles in films such as Nikaah, Insaaf Ka Tarazu, Kalyug and Umrao Jaan.
3. After a successful run in Bollywood, Mr Babbar ventured into politics in 1989 with former Prime Minister VP Singh-led Janata Dal. A few years later, he became a part of the newly formed Samajwadi Party under Mulayam Singh Yadav and was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1994. He made his electoral debut in 1996, unsuccessfully contesting against BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee in Lucknow.
4. In 1999, Raj Babbar tried his luck in electoral politics again and defeated three-time BJP MP Bhagwan Shankar Rawat in his hometown Agra. He was reelected in 2004 but was suspended from the Samajwadi Party after he accused party general secretary Amar Singh of “promoting broker culture” and demanded his removal. In 2008 he joined the Congress party.
5. In 2009, Raj Babbar defeated Samajwadi Party's Dimple Yadav, the wife of Akhilesh Yadav and daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav, by a margin of 85,000 votes in the Firozabad seat and secured his third consecutive term in the lower house of the Parliament. The actor-politician has since faced two successive defeats in 2014 and 2019 against BJP's General (Retired) VK Singh in Ghaziabad and then Raj Kumar Chahar in Fatehpur Sikri, respectively.