Cricketer Praveen Kumar joined the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) on Sunday. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav inducted him into the party.
A right-arm medium pace bowler, Praveen currently plays for the IPL team Gujarat Lions. (BCCI)
Praveen may be fielded from a Meerut assembly seat in the 2017 polls as he hails from the city.
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A right-arm medium pace bowler, Praveen currently plays for the IPL team Gujarat Lions. He has been a part of the Indian cricket team and IPL teams including Kings XI Punjab and Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Speaking to Hindustan Times, the cricketer confirmed that he had joined SP but did not say anything on the possibility of contesting the assembly polls next year.
The 29-year-old comes from a family of traditional wrestlers. He will continue to play IPL the way cricketer Md Kaif did. Kaif is a member of Congress and had contested in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Phulpur seat of Allahabad.
Pankaj Jaiswal is Bureau Chief, Uttar Pradesh. He covers-analyses politics, and assists Hindustan Times reporters across the state. He has 30 years of experience in print media reporting. Based in Lucknow, he started his journalism career at a national English daily in Kanpur after graduating from Christ Church College. He joined Hindustan Times, Lucknow edition, as part of the launch team in 1997. He’s covered everything from rural distress to science, environment, wildlife, and crime. He has travelled extensively in Uttar Pradesh for rural, development, political, and election reporting. His continued interest in rural issues, rural distress, and development journalism has fetched him a handful of prestigious awards and fellowships. Pankaj is a photojournalist too. He clinched the Statesman Award for Rural Reporting—First Prize in 2009 and Third Prize in 2006—for exposing Bundelkhand’s devastating drought and distress: crop failures, farm suicides, migration, debt, and the injustice of meagre compensation cheques between Rs 10 and Rs 20 to farmers by the government from crop loss. He also has been awarded with Hindustan Times internal 'Journalist of the Month' citation over half a dozen times. His relentless reporting in Hindustan Times pulled the Bundelkhand crisis out of obscurity and forced it into the national spotlight, prompting media and government action on one of India’s most neglected regions. Over a decade, he filed hundreds of hard-hitting stories, travelling repeatedly from Lucknow deep into Bundelkhand. He also received the Special Mention KC Kulish International Award 2009. Pankaj also did long-haul political reporting on the most intense political family feud—’The Yadav Family Feud’—between 2016 and 2022.
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