Shriprakash Mani Tripathi

Lieutenant General Shriprakash Mani Tripathi, a retired senior Indian Army officer who went on to become the first Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament from Deoria, died on 8 November 2026 at Medanta Hospital in the Delhi National Capital Region. He was 91. He had been admitted to hospital and under treatment for several days before his death, which came on a Sunday morning.

Tripathi was born on 30 June 1935 in Deoria, in what was then the United Provinces of British India, into a family already prominent in public life. His father, Surat Narayan Mani Tripathi, was an officer of the Indian Civil Service who later served as founding president of Gorakhpur University and as vice chancellor of Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya. Tripathi was commissioned into the Indian Army in June 1955 and went on to serve for roughly four decades, including deployments in Jammu and Kashmir and service during the 1971 war with Pakistan, for which he was remembered in tributes as a war hero. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant General and held the post of Deputy Chief of the Army Staff before retiring from military service.

After leaving the army, Tripathi entered politics with the Bharatiya Janata Party and made history in his home district in 1996, when he became the first BJP candidate to win the Deoria Lok Sabha seat, defeating the long serving Samajwadi Party leader Mohan Singh. He lost the seat in 1998 but won it back in 1999, serving as Deoria's MP for a second term until 2004. His entry into electoral politics, following a distinguished military career, was seen locally as a turning point that opened the district to BJP representation it had not previously had.

Tripathi's family continued in public life after his own retirement from parliament. His son, Shashank Mani Tripathi, followed him into politics and was elected as the BJP member of parliament for Deoria in 2024, meaning father and son both represented the same constituency in different eras. Other relatives, including uncles from the extended Tripathi family, had also held elected office in the Deoria region, making the family one of the more established political names in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

News of Tripathi's death brought an outpouring of condolence from Uttar Pradesh. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath posted a message of condolence, and said a prayer for the departed soul and for the strength of the grieving family to bear their loss, and announced he would travel to Tripathi's native village. Tributes also came from across the political and social spheres of the Purvanchal region of eastern Uttar Pradesh, where he was remembered both as a soldier who served the country and as a political leader who gave Deoria its voice in parliament. His family said his body would be brought to his native village of Barpar in Deoria district, where funeral arrangements were to be announced by his son.