LUCKNOW: The political career of Mohammad Azam Khan, one of the senior leaders of the Samajwadi Party, seems to be in for a turbulent time following his conviction and three-year jail term in a hate speech case dating back to 2019.
The conviction followed by the disqualification of the SP leader from the state assembly may be the end of the road for him in electoral politics. If Azam Khan fails to get a reprieve from higher courts, he would not be allowed to contest any election for the next six years from the day of his release from jail after serving the term. It would lead Khan to be away from electoral politics for nine years in all.
One of the pillars of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav's think tank with a tight grip on Muslim votes, especially of western UP, Azam Khan's influence came in handy for the SP-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance in the 2022 Assembly polls as it bagged around 40 seats from the western region of the state.
Of the five assembly seats of the Rampur parliamentary segment, three were bagged by the SP-RLD alliance. Azam Khan from Rampur and his son Abdullah Azam from Suar Tanda won their respective seats.
Similarly, in Moradabad, which has over 50 per cent Muslim voters, of the six seats, five went to SP and only one was bagged by the BJP. In Sambhal, another Muslim-dominated constituency, of the four assembly segments, three went to SP and one to the BJP.
Azam Khan's conviction and his disqualification from the Assembly came as a major jolt for his party just before the upcoming urban local body polls due this year-end and 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
"Azam Khan's growing age and health condition and criminal cases lodged in abundance against him are set to multiply his problems making his return to active politics difficult," says Prof SK Dwivedi, former head, of the political science department of Lucknow University.
The strongman of Rampur, on the wrong side of age, has been struggling with a number of medical conditions while grappling with hearings in the criminal cases lodged against him in different courts.
However, as per SP sources, Azam Khan is in the process of challenging his conviction order delivered by Rampur MP/MLA court in Rampur sessions Court soon. He is consulting the legal luminaries and is likely to move the Sessions Court soon as the MP/MLA court while granting him interim bail had allowed him to challenge his conviction within a week's time in the higher court.