NewDelhi: In yet another huge setback for Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, the Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal filed by his son Abdullah Azam Khan challenging the Allahabad High Court order which annulled his election as Uttar Pradesh legislator on grounds that he was underage and not qualified to contest the poll in 2017.
The Allahabad High Court had declared the election of Abdullah Khan from the Suar Assembly segment from Rampur district null and void as he was less than 25 years of age. Abdullah Khan was elected as MLA on a Samajwadi Party ticket on March 11, 2017.
The Supreme Court had earlier junked a plea filed by him challenging an order of the Allahabad High Court refusing to quash the chargesheet in the fake birth certificate case of his MLA son, saying it does not find any reason to interfere with the HC order. The petition was rejected by a division bench comprising Justices Hemant Gupta and Vikram Nath. “However, any observation and discussion passed by the high court will not prejudice the trial which the appellant is required to face,” the bench said.
Azam Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima and son Abdullah Azam Khan had been in jail in a criminal case registered against them over two allegedly fake birth certificates issued to Abdullah, the sitting MLA from Suar in Uttar Pradesh, through fraudulent means from two different places.
The FIR lodged by BJP leader Akash Saxena at the Ganj police station in Rampur on January 3, 2019, alleged that Azam Khan and his wife helped their son obtain two fake date of birth certificates– one from Lucknow and another from Rampur.
Abdullah Azam was elected to the state assembly in the previous polls, too, but the Allahabad High Court had cancelled the election on the ground that he was less than the required 25 years of age at the time of filing his nomination. Azam Khan is a 10-term MLA from the Rampur Assembly constituency.
Azam Khan, the foremost Muslim politician from the state, was lodged in jail for 27 months in connection with several cases, including that of land grabbing, before being granted interim bail by the Supreme Court in a cheating case in May this year.
Bureau Report
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