Court rejects Azam’s plea for stay on conviction, paves way for Rampur bypoll

“Azam Khan had sought a stay on the order passed by the Rampur MP/MLA court. The court rejected his plea, and the hearing for the appeal (against the conviction in the hate speech case) will go on as usual,” prosecution officer Amarnath Tewari told The Indian Express.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had asked the Election Commission to defer issuing notification for by-election to the Rampur Sadar Assembly seat till November 11 to enable him to approach the appellate court for a stay on the conviction.

The bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, and Justice Hima Kohli and Justice JB Pardiwala also ordered the Rampur Additional Sessions Judge, before whom the Khan’s appeal has been filed, to “prepone” the hearing of the application for a stay on conviction and take it up “peremptorily on November 10 and disposed of on the same day”.

The court had also pointed out that if the conviction was stayed, the disqualification would also be stayed, and asked the Election Commission to give Khan reasonable time to appeal against the conviction.

Soon after the Rampur sessions court rejected Khan’s plea, the Election Commission on Thursday announced that the bypoll in the Rampur Sadar Assembly constituency would go ahead on December 5. The poll panel said that notification for the bypoll would be announced on Friday, and the last date for filing nomination has been pushed to November 18. However, the polling date and the counting date will remain same – December 5 and December 8, respectively — as announced earlier.

On October 27, Khan was convicted in a hate speech case and sentenced to three years of imprisonment. He was later granted bail.

A day later, the UP Assembly Secretariat declared his Assembly seat, Rampur Sadar, vacant, citing his disqualification as an MLA under the Representation of People’s Act.

While Khan faces more than 80 cases lodged against him since 2017, the hate speech case was the first one till now where he was convicted. The other cases are still pending.

In the hate speech case, lodged by election official Anil Kumar Chauhan, it was alleged that Khan in a speech had “used foul language for people in Constitutional posts, threatened them, and tried to flare a riot”.