Ritu Khanduri

Some Lesser Known Facts About Ritu Khanduri

• Ritu Khanduri is an Indian politician. In 2022, she won the assembly elections from the Kotdwar constituency of Uttarakhand, and soon after winning the assembly elections, she was appointed as the first woman speaker of the Legislative Assembly in Uttarakhand. Ritu Khanduri is the president of Bharatiya Janata Party’s Uttarakhand Mahila Morcha unit.

• Ritu Khanduri’s father, BC Khanduri, was appointed as the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand twice from 2007 to 2009, and again from 2011 to 2012. BC Khanduri is a retired Major General from the Indian Army, and he is the recipient of the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal in 1982.

• From 2006 to 2017, Ritu Khanduri was a teacher at Amity University in Noida. In a conversation with a media house, one of the family members of Ritu Khanduri stated that Ritu was happy with her teaching job, and she ventured into politics at the behest of her father. Her family member said,
  

  She was a teacher and she was very happy with her teaching job. She had initial hesitancy in taking the political plunge but did so at the behest of her father. The reluctance was initial, because now she is fully invested in politics. She was crestfallen after being denied the ticket (from Yamkeshwar) because she had nurtured the constituency really well.”

• In 2012, Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri lost the assembly elections from the Kotdwar seat to his opponent Surendra Singh Negi. He then distanced himself from politics. Bhuwan Chandra Khanduri’s legacy was taken over by his daughter, Ritu Khanduri. In 2017, Ritu Khanduri contested the assembly elections from Yamkeshwar seat for the first time and defeated former minister Surendra Singh Negi.

• In 2022, Ritu Khanduri was denied a party ticket from her Yamkeshwar constituency; however, she was asked to contest the assembly elections from the Kotdwar constituency by Bharatiya Janata Party, and she won the MLA elections. Soon after the win, in a press conference, Ritu Khanduri thanked the voters of Kotdwar for choosing her as their representative. She said,
  

  First of all, I want to thank the party high command and voters of Kotdwar for reposing faith in me. It is exactly a decade when my father had also contested from here and will work hard to ensure development and local people’s issues are taken up and solved.”

• Ritu Khanduri’s brother Manish Khanduri is a member of the Indian National Congress, who contested the Lok Sabha polls from the Garhwal constituency in 2019 but lost the elections.

• In 2022, she was appointed as the sixth speaker of the Uttarakhand assembly. BJP’s Prakash Pant was the first speaker of the state.