Samajwadi Party leader and 10-time MLA from Rampur Sadar, Azam Khan, was on Friday disqualified as a member of Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly after his conviction by an MP-MLA court in a 2019 hate speech case.
The Vidhan Sabha secretariat said that as per Section 125 of the Representation of the People’s Act 1951 along with Sections 505 (1) and 153 (A) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Mr. Khan’s membership in the House ceased to exit after the court sentenced him to three years in jail on Thursday. The court had also imposed a fine of ₹2,000 in the case registered against him during the 2019 Lok Sabha campaign, for allegedly making provocative remarks against U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and then Rampur District Magistrate Aunjaneya Kumar Singh.
The court has granted bail to Mr. Khan and given him time to file an appeal against the conviction.
Mr. Khan, considered the most prominent Muslim face of the SP, was the party’s candidate from the Rampur Lok Sabha seat during the 2019 general election. A founding member of the Samajwadi Party, Mr. Khan has served as Minister in all the governments headed by late Mulayam Singh and by Akhilesh Yadav. He was elected MLA for the first time in 1980 and also served as member of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha in his political career spanning over four decades.
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