5 Facts About Dimple Yadav, Samajwadi Party Candidate From Mainpuri

The Samajwadi Party has retained sitting MP Dimple Yadav for the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat. Dimple Yadav, wife of party boss Akhilesh Yadav, won the seat by over 2.8 lakh votes in the 2022 byelection. The seat, considered an Samajwadi Party stronghold, was earlier held by founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, who died on October 10. 

Here are some facts about Dimple Yadav:

1. Born on January 15, 1978, in Pune, Dimple Yadav is the daughter of retired Army Colonel Ram Chandra Singh Rawat and Champa Rawat. Her family comes from Uttarakhand and she is a graduate of commerce.

2.  She met Akhilesh Yadav when they were both students. They married on November 24, 1999. The couple has three children.

3. Dimple Yadav's political journey began in 2009 when she contested the Lok Sabha elections from the Faizabad seat but lost to Raj Babbar, who was with the Congress at the time. Three years later, in 2012, she contested the Kannauj byelection and was elected unopposed to the Lok Sabha.

4. In 2014, Dimple Yadav retained the Kannauj seat despite a BJP wave across the country. She defeated her closest opponent by 19,907 votes. Ms Yadav was a member of the Standing Committee on Water Resources and also served as a member of the Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Women and Child Development in the 16th Lok Sabha.

5. In 2019, she lost from Kannauj, a seat held by the Samajwadi Party for the two decades, to BJP's Subrat Pathak by a margin of over 12,000 votes. After the Kannauj loss, Dimple Yadav returned to the Lok Sabha from the Mainpuri seat in 2022.