Ajay Rai (born 7 October 1969) is an Indian politician and a member of the Indian National Congress since 2012. He is a five-time MLA from Uttar Pradesh. A local strongman in the Varanasi area, Rai has changed his party affiliations several times. He began his political career as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party's student wing. He won the Legislative Assembly elections from the Kolasla constituency three times in a row between 1996 and 2007 on a BJP ticket. He left the party after being denied a Lok Sabha ticket. He then joined the Samajwadi Party and unsuccessfully contested the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. Subsequently, he won the 2009 Legislative Assembly by-election from the Kolasla constituency as an independent. He joined the Indian National Congress in 2012. After the Kolasla constituency ceased to exist post-delimitation, he won the 2012 Assembly elections from the newly created Pindra constituency, which comprises a sizeable portion of the former Kolasla constituency. He was the Congress candidate for the Varanasi parliament seat in the 2014 and 2019 general elections, and lost to Narendra Modi. Early life Ajay Rai was born in Varanasi to Parvati Devi Rai and Surendra Rai in a Bhumihar family who were natives of Ghazipur district. According to The Indian Express and other Indian newspapers, he is known as a local bahubali (strongman) and is a history-sheeter, a term in Indian English for a person with a "history of criminal record". He became an associate of Brijesh Singh, after his elder brother Awadhesh Rai was shot dead in Lahurabir area, allegedly by Mukhtar Ansari and his men in 1994. Earlier, he had been associated with Brijesh Singh and Tribhuvan Singh in several criminal cases since 1989. In 1991, his name had figured in an attack on the Anil Singh, the deputy mayor of Varanasi. In his FIR, Anil Singh stated that Ajay Rai and others had fired at his jeep in the Cantonment area on 20 August 1991. Rai was later acquitted in the case. Political career Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rai began his political career as a member of the BJP's youth wing. In 1996, Rai contested the Vidhan Sabha elections from the Kolasla seat on a BJP ticket. He defeated the nine-time CPI MLA Udal by a narrow margin of 484 votes. He went on to retain the seat in the 2002 and 2007 elections, defeating Awadhesh Singh