LUCKNOW: Under attack from the political adversaries over giving a ticket to tainted sitting party MLA Nahid Hassan from Kairana Assembly seat, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav replaced him by his sister Iqra Hassan on Monday.
Nahid was arrested under Gangster Act on January 15 after filing his nomination. Later, he was sent into 14-day judicial custody by the Shamli MP/MLA court.
Meanwhile, during a hearing on Tuesday, the fast-track court of Shamli rejected the bail plea of Nahid Hassan. Rejecting Hassan’s bail plea, MP/MLA special court judge Subodh Singh said there was no case for relief. The SP MLA's lawyer Manoj Rana said they would move the high court for bail.
Notably, the ruling BJP had been aggressively raising the criminal credentials of Nahid Hassan following which SP chief Akhilesh Yadav had hinted that he would replace Nahid with any of his family members who would not be having a single criminal case against him/her.
Nahid Hassan had been absconding in a case lodged against him and his mother and former MP Tabassum Hassan along with 40 others under the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act in Kairana Kotwali in February last year.
While Allahabad High Court had granted bail to Tabassum Hassan and other accused in the case, it had rejected the bail plea of Nahid. Hassan, who had been absconding since then, failed to surrender in court following which a non-bailable warrant was issued against him.
Nahid Hassan had defeated BJP’s Mriganka Singh by a margin of over 21,000 votes in the 2017 Assembly elections amid landslide victory of BJP in the region. However, the BJP has again fielded Mriganka Singh in the fray against Hassan.
Although Iqra Hassan had been pitching for an SP ticket from Budhana, the party decided to field her from Kairana. Nahid, a controversial politician, has a criminal past with around two dozen cases lodged against him over the years since 2012.