Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Akash Saxena won the by-elections in troubled Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan’s bastion of Rampur Sadar in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.
Saxena defeated Khan’s close associate and SP candidate Asim Raja with a margin of more than 33,500 votes, becoming the first ever BJP candidate to register victory in Rampur Sadar.
Bypolls in the constituency were necessitated after Khan, who represented Rampur Sadar seat for 10 times, was disqualified by the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly following his conviction in a 2019 hate speech case.
In October this year, a Lucknow-based special MP-MLA court convicted and sent him to jail for three years in a case registered against him for allegedly making provocative statements against chief minister Yogi Adityanath and then Rampur district magistrate Aunjaneya Kumar Singh during the campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019.
A fine of ₹2,000 was also slapped by the court against him. He was granted bail and given time to file an appeal against his conviction.
On November 10, his appeal against the conviction was rejected by a sessions court in Rampur.
Subsequently, the Legislative Assembly secretariat released a notification, disqualifying the former state minister under section 125 of the Representation of the People’s Act 1951 along with Sections 505 (1) and 153 (A) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Considered the Muslim face of the Samajwadi Party, Khan won the Lok Sabha bypolls from Rampur in 2019, only to vacate the seat to contest the assembly polls from Rampur Sadar in early 2022.
One of the founding members of the Samajwadi Party, Khan served as a minister in all governments helmed by late party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son Akhilesh, the current president of the party.
Khan started his political career with student union politics in the Aligarh Muslim University. He was elected as a legislator for the first time in 1990. He also served as a member of both houses of the Indian parliament.
Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidate Madan Bhaiya defeated BJP’s Rajkumari Saini in the Khatauli Assembly bypolls of Muzaffarnagar district with a margin of more than 22000 votes.