Nomination closes today, SP has no candidate in Azam Khan turf Rampur

However, till late Tuesday, the SP had no candidate in Rampur, one of eight Uttar Pradesh seats voting in the first phase on April 19.

Local SP leaders, despondent over Khan’s absence from the scene, said they too had requested Akhilesh to contest, but got no response.

SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said the matter was not over, and that the call for the party unit to boycott the polls in Rampur was just a “suggestion”. “The final decision will be taken by the party national president (Akhilesh),” Chaudhary said.

He added that while there was no question of Akhilesh contesting from Rampur, the SP would have a candidate in the fray by Wednesday.

The BJP has renominated from the seat Ghanshyam Singh Lodhi, who won a bypoll to the Rampur Lok Sabha seat in June 2022 and is the sitting MP. The bypoll was necessitated due to Khan’s decision to leave the seat after winning the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections held in February-March 2022.

Lodhi is scheduled to file his nomination on Wednesday.

In his letter to party leaders asking them to boycott the elections, SP Rampur district president Ajay Sagar wrote about “atrocities” on local party workers, including fake cases against them. The letter, in Hindi, said: “We felt it was important for the SP national president to come to Rampur to change this atmosphere. Who can forget what happened in the past two by-elections (for the Rampur Lok Sabha and Assembly seats)?”

Sagar added, “We have contested several elections, won and lost… but never got discouraged… An officer is continuing in the district against the rules of the Election Commission, with the sole goal of defeating (the SP)… In this atmosphere and situation, we boycott the current election. The party national president will take a decision about the election in Rampur.”

For decades, Azam Khan has been the SP’s Rampur face, and the one who took the call on party candidates for the constituency and its adjoining seats.

In 2019, Khan won from the Rampur Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 1.09 lakh votes against the BJP’s Jaya Prada. The SP had fought in 2019 in an alliance with the BSP and RLD.

In February 2020, Khan was jailed in a case related to alleged forgery of his son Abdullah Khan’s birth certificate, so that he could meet the minimum age limit to contest elections.

In May 2022, Khan was released on bail by the Supreme Court. The Rampur Lok Sabha seat fell vacant after Khan contested and won in the Assembly polls.

Khan was later re-arrested, after being convicted in a hate speech case lodged during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. His conviction led to his disqualification as an MLA, leading to a bypoll for the Rampur Assembly seat in December 2022.

Both bypolls were won by the BJP, in a major breach in Khan and SP’s turf. The Assembly seat bypoll was marked by widespread allegations of intimidation, with polling remaining as low as 4% in some parts.

Apart from Khan, his wife Tansen Fatima is lodged in Rampur jail, on the same charge of forging Abdullah’s birth certificate, while Abdullah is in Hardoi jail. Abdullah’s conviction led to him being disqualified as the Suar MLA.

Asim Raja, the SP Rampur city president who lost both the 2022 bypolls for the Rampur Lok Sabha and Assembly seats, said they were “helpless”. “This is the decision of the Rampur party leadership… We saw how the Rampur administration captured the entire district and forcibly snatched the elections from us in the last two-three years.”

Raja added that they wanted Akhilesh to take up the Rampur baton, as “it would raise the morale of party workers and he will win the seat”. “It was conveyed to Akhileshji when he met Khan in jail. Five days have passed, but we have not received any reply from him. We had to take a call. Except the candidature of Akhileshji, there is no option,” Raja said, adding that the words in the letter issued to voters “belong to Azam Khan saheb”.

Since 2017, 81 cases have been registered against Khan in Rampur on charges ranging from land-grabbing, cheating and criminal trespass to hate speech.

In the past eight Lok Sabha elections, the SP and BJP have won the Rampur seat thrice each, and the Congress twice.