of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) by much larger margins. A Bhumihar himself, he relied on the Bhumihar and Brahmin vote banks in the Kolasla constituency. Samajwadi Party (SP) In 2007, Rai denied the rumours that he was planning to join the Samajwadi Party (SP), stating that the SP was responsible for "all the ills plaguing the State". However, in 2009, he resigned as an MLA, after BJP refused to give him a ticket for contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi. He then joined SP, and contested the elections against BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi. He lost the elections, getting the third highest number of votes after Joshi and Mukhtar Ansari. His supporters allegedly campaigned for Joshi to ensure the defeat of his arch-rival Mukhtar Ansari in a communally-polarized environment. Independent After losing the Lok Sabha elections, he contested the Kolasla by-elections as an independent. He alleged that BSP had pressurised him to join the party, and when he refused, his security cover was reduced. During the campaigning, he accused some police officers of pressurising his supporters to work for the candidate of the ruling BSP. When he protested against the alleged harassment, he and seven of his supporters were arrested. Rai won the by-elections. In 2010, Rai staged a sit-in to protest the arrest of the local corporator Sanjay Singh and his associate Jitin Jha. The two had been arrested for assaulting and robbing a hotel owner. After Rai refused to end his protest, he and his supporters were arrested. Indian National Congress (INC) After the Kolasla constituency ceased to exist post-delimitation, Rai won from the 2012 Assembly elections from the new Pindra constituency, which comprises a sizeable portion of the former Kolasla constituency. He routed the BJP candidate, who received just 3,000 votes. When he contested the 2012 elections, Rai was an accused in 16 criminal cases, and was booked under the Gangster Act and Goonda Act. According to him, he had been framed in four cases by the Bahujan Samaj Party regime, while other cases were "mostly over". Rai was the Congress candidate in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi. He lost to BJP's prime-ministerial nominee Narendra Modi, coming third after Arvind Kejriwal. On 5 October 2015, Rai was arrested for his alleged role in the violence and arson in Varanasi during a march by seers and other local leaders against police action on protesters opposing ban