Azam Khan’s jail term may give BJP a shot at winning Rampur assembly seat for first time
Azam Khan had vacated the Rampur Lok Sabha seat earlier this year to retain the Rampur assembly seat after the 2022 UP assembly polls. The BJP won the Lok Sabha seat in the bypolls.
The three-year jail term awarded to senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan, 74, in a hate speech case on Thursday comes as a setback to his party and may give the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance to win the Rampur assembly seat for the first time, political analysts have said.
Azam Khan may now lose his membership of the state assembly and not be able to contest a poll for nine years as the Representation of the People Act says that anyone sentenced to imprisonment of two years or more shall be disqualified “from the date of such conviction” and remain disqualified for another six years after serving time in jail.
The Speaker can start the disqualification proceedings either suo motu or after receiving an application on this. The Election Commission could also take a decision on this, the news agency PTI quoted a government as saying.
“This comes as a blow to the SP as the absence of the party’s Muslim face from the poll scene would certainly affect the party,” said political analyst and former head of the department of political science, Lucknow University, Prof SK Dwivedi.
The SP had hoped Azam would brighten the party’s prospects in the Rampur region and Muslim majority pockets in the forthcoming local bodies elections in the state.
The SP’s hope of regaining the Rampur Lok Sabha seat through Azam Khan looks dismal now as he may not be able to re-contest the seat in 2024.
Azam Khan had vacated the Rampur Lok Sabha seat earlier this year to retain the Rampur assembly seat after the 2022 UP assembly polls. The BJP won the Lok Sabha seat in the bypolls.
With a bypoll likely, the BJP’s hope of wresting the Rampur assembly seat from the SP is high-especially in the backdrop of it victory in the Rampur Lok Sabha by-election in June.
Despite being in jail, Azam Khan had won the Rampur assembly seat by a wide margin in March.
Azam Khan won the Rampur assembly seat 10 times and his wife Tazeen Fatma won it once (in a bypoll). The BJP or its forerunner the Jana Sangh could never win the seat.