Dimple Yadav was born in 1978 at Pune, Maharashtra. She is the second of three daughters of retired Indian Army Col R. C. S. Rawat and Champa Rawat. Her family is originally from Uttarakhand. She was educated in Pune, Bathinda and Andaman and Nicobar island and Army Public School, Nehru road, Lucknow. She graduated in commerce from Lucknow University. Dimple met Akhilesh Yadav when she was a student. Originally Akhilesh's family was opposed to their marriage, but they agreed after Akhilesh's grandmother Murtidevi approved. The pair got married when she was aged 21. Guests at her wedding included movie stars, Amitabh Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna. The couple have two daughters and a son.
Political career
Yadav unsuccessfully contested the by-election for the Lok Sabha constituency of Firozabad in 2009 against actor turned politician Raj Babbar. The by-election was caused by her husband winning a seat in the May 2009 general elections both in this constituency as well as in Kannauj and taking up his seat from there. She was elected unopposed from the Kannauj constituency to the Lok Sabha in 2012, after her husband caused another by-election by vacating the seat to enter the Uttar Pradesh legislative council. Dimple became the 44th person in the country and only the fourth in Uttar Pradesh since the independence of India to be elected unopposed. This situation arose when two candidates, Dashrath Singh Shankwar and Sanju Katiyar, withdrew their nominations. Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian National Congress had not nominated any candidates for the by-election; though the BJP clarified later that their candidate missed his train so he failed to reach in time to file his nomination. This made her the first woman from Uttar Pradesh to elected unopposed in a Lok Sabha by-election, and second person after Purshottam Das Tandon's election from Allahabad West in 1952. She became the only woman MP whose husband was Chief Minister, and also one whose father-in-law was also a member of the same House. Dimple contested as a joint candidate of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, but lost to BJP's Subrat Pathak with a margin of more than 10,000 votes.
