Manoj Sinha had won the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat in 2014 by a margin of 32,452 votes.

Manoj Sinha, a dhoti-clad civil engineer from the prestigious Banaras Hindu University and three-time MP, seems to have fallen victim to caste equation as he lost from the Ghazipur constituency in eastern Uttar Pradesh by a margin of 1.19 lakh votes.

Mr Sinha, who was Telecom Minister in the Narendra Modi government, lost to Afzal Ansari, the brother of don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari. Mr Ansari was the joint candidate of the 'mahagathbandhan' (Bahujan Samaj Party-Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance).

Mr Sinha got 4.46 lakh votes as compared to BSP's Afzal Ansari who received 5.66 lakh votes.

Mr Sinha had won this seat in 2014 by a margin of 32,452 votes.

Fondly called "Vikas Purush" by his followers, Mr Sinha took charge of the high-profile telecom portfolio from Ravi Shankar Prasad in 2016 at a time when the industry was rolling up its sleeves for a mega-spectrum sale.



Mr Sinha spent the next almost three years steering the hyper-competitive industry that was hemorrhaging on financial stress.

During his stint as Telecom Minister, Mr Sinha made focused interventions to stabilise the industry including a crackdown on call drops (service quality issues are a pain point for consumers), measures for ease of doing business, and finalising a revival package for the debt-ridden telecom sector.

Mr Sinha, a three-time BJP Member of Parliament (MP), was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1996, a feat that he repeated in 1999. In 2014, Mr Sinha was elected to the Lok Sabha for the third time.

A 'Bhumihar' by birth, Mr Sinha was, at one point, seen as the frontrunner for UP Chief Minister's post following BJP's stunning victory in the 2017 Assembly polls. Mr Sinha began his political career after being elected the president of Banaras Hindu University Students' Union in 1982.