Samajwadi Party leader Abdullah Azam Khan was on Wednesday disqualified as MLA of the Suar constituency in Uttar Pradesh two days after he was convicted in a 15-year-old case, PTI reported.
The Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly secretariat took the decision on the basis of a 2013 Supreme Court judgement which had held that an MLA, MLC or MP convicted in a criminal case and jailed for a minimum of two years will lose membership of the House with immediate effect.
On February 13, Khan and his father, Azam Khan, had been convicted in a case related to holding a demonstration on a state highway on January 29, 2008, according to PTI. The demonstration had started after their cavalcade was stopped by the police for checking in the wake of an attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur on December 31, 2007.
The court, however, granted bail to both of them in the case.
On Wednesday, an unidentified official of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly said that Abdullah Azam Khan’s seat has been declared vacant from February 13, reported PTI.
This is the second time that Abdullah Azam Khan has been disqualified as MLA.
He was earlier disqualified from the Assembly in 2020 after the Allahabad High Court had ruled that he was not qualified to contest the election as he was under 25 years of age at the time of his nomination in 2017.
Khan, however, was elected as MLA again in the 2022 assembly elections.
In October, Azam Khan was also disqualified as MLA of the Rampur Sadar seat a day after he was convicted in a hate speech case.
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