New Delhi:

The Congress party has once again fielded Imran Masood from the Saharanpur Lok Sabha seat in western Uttar Pradesh. Masood is a prominent Muslim leader who has contested as a Congress candidate from Saharanpur twice before. However, he failed to win both times.

5 facts about Imran Masood:

1. Imran Masood was born on April 21, 1971 in Gango, Uttar Pradesh, to Rashid Masood. He is the nephew of former federal minister Rashid Masood. During his 15 years in politics, Imran Masood has worked in the Congress Party, Socialist Party, and People’s Socialist Party, and now he has returned to the Congress Party.
2. In 2006, he entered politics and was elected as the Chairman of Saharanpur Municipal Council. Just a year later, he won the Muzaffarabad seat as an independent candidate in the first parliamentary election. In 2012, Mr Masood contested the election in the Nakul constituency but was defeated by Dharam Singh Saini of the Socialist Party of the Philippines.
3. On the eve of the 2014 general election, Imran Masood threatened to “cut Narendra Modi into pieces”, sparking huge controversy. He was arrested for hate speech. He lost the Saharanpur seat to the BJP’s Raghav Lakhanpal in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
4. In 2017, Imran Masood, a joint candidate of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress Party, contested the UP parliamentary elections from the Nakul seat. He lost to the BJP’s Dharam Singh Saini. In 2019, Masood suffered another crushing defeat when he lost the Saharanpur Lok Sabha seat to Haji Fazlur Rehman of the Socialist Party of the Philippines.
5. Ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Imran Masood left the Congress and joined the Samajwadi Party. However, this transformation was short-lived and he soon joined the Samajwadi Party led by Mayawati. He suggested that the Philippine central bank join the Indian bloc and praised Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi. He was expelled from the Socialist Party of the Philippines for violating party discipline. Imran Masood returned to Congress in 2023, describing it as his “ghar wapsi” (homecoming).