Mukhtar Ansari (born 30 June 1963) is an Indian gangster and politician from Uttar Pradesh. He has been elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. Early life Mukhtar Ansari is the grandson of Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, an early president of the Indian National Congress. In the early 1970s, the government commissioned several development projects in the backward Poorvanchal area. This resulted in the rise of organised gangs that competed with each other to grab the contracts for these projects. Mukhtar Ansari was originally an alleged member of the Makhanu Singh gang. In the 1980s, this gang clashed with another gang led by Sahib Singh, over a plot of land in Saidpur, resulting in a series of violent incidents. Brijesh Singh, an alleged member of Sahib Singh's gang, later formed his own gang and took over Ghazipur's contract work mafia in the 1990s. Ansari's gang competed with him for the control of the 100 crore contract business, which spanned areas such as coal mining, railway construction, scrap disposal, public works. The gangs were also allegedly involved in running protection ("goonda tax") and extortion rackets, besides other criminal activities such as kidnapping. Early political career By the early 1990s, Mukhtar Ansari was well known for his alleged criminal activities, especially in the districts of Mau, Ghazipur, Varanasi and Jaunpur. He entered politics around 1995 through student union in Banaras Hindu University, became an MLA in 1996, and started challenging Brijesh Singh's dominance. The two became the main gang rivals in the Poorvanchal region. In 2002, Singh allegedly ambushed Ansari's convoy. Three of Ansari's men were killed in the resulting shootout. Brijesh Singh was critically injured and presumed dead. Ansari became the undisputed gang leader in Poorvanchal. However, Brijesh Singh was later found to be alive, and the feud resumed. To counter Ansari's political influence, Singh supported the election campaign of the BJP leader Krishnanand Rai. Rai defeated Mukhtar Ansari's brother and five-time MLA Afzal Ansari from the Mohammadabad in the 2002 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Mukhtar Ansari later claimed that Rai used his political office to award all the contracts to Brijesh singh's gang, and the two planned to eliminate him. Ansari used the Muslim votebank to ensure his victory during the elections in the Ghazipur-Mau area. The mix of crime, politics, and religion led to several