In UP’s long tale of crime meets politics, a new chapter for bahubali Dhananjay Singh

ON MARCH 2, former MP Dhananjay Singh, 48, declared that he would be contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha polls from Jaunpur. In a post on X, the bahubali (strongman) of Uttar Pradesh’s Purvanchal said, “Saathiyon, taiyyar rahiye, lakshya bas ek… Lok Sabha 73, Jaunpur (Friends! Be ready… our target is only one, Lok Sabha seat No. 73, Jaunpur).”

His announcement coincided with the release of the BJP’s first list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections, which included Kripashankar Singh from Jaunpur. Kripashankar, a former minister of state in the 1999-2003 Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra, switched allegiance to the BJP in 2021.

Jaunpur, the ancestral home of both Kripashankar and Dhananjay, has approximately 19 lakh voters, predominantly OBCs, with a substantial share of the Yadav, Brahmin and Thakur communities. So far, no other party has declared its candidate for the seat.

On March 5, days after Dhananjay had announced his intentions to contest elections, his political aspirations took an abrupt turn when an MP-MLA court in Jaunpurfound him guilty in a four-year-old case involving kidnapping, extortion and criminal conspiracy. He and his associate Santosh Vikram Singh were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in the case.

A well-known criminal-turned-politician of UP, among many others in the state’s ranks, Dhananjay has faced numerous cases, from Lucknow and Jaunpur to Delhi, over the years. But the recent conviction marks his first legal setback. Crucially, he has not won an election since 2009.

A Thakur, Dhananjay first hit headlines in the state while still enrolled at Lucknow University, figuring routinely in connection with university politics and criminal cases. In 1998, he went into hiding after the Uttar