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BJP may get another shot at winning Azam’s assembly seat
BJP had failed to grab the Rampur seat in the just concluded UP assembly polls as Azam Khan won it for the ninth time
The BJP might get another shot at winning the ‘invincible’ Rampur assembly seat of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan.
The saffron party failed to grab the Rampur seat in the just concluded UP assembly polls as Khan won it for the ninth time.
Khan is likely to resign from assembly seat to retain his Rampur Lok Sabha seat.
In 2017, despite the Modi wave, Khan had won the Rampur assembly seat and in 2019 Khan’s wife Tazeen Fatima had won it in the by-polls.
In 2022, Khan was behind bars but he clinched the seat. In fact, BJP has never won this seat.
In 2022, when 73-year-old Khan was in jail, the BJP fielded Akash Saxena, 46, against him. Akash is the person who filed about 30 of the nearly 100 FIRs in Rampur against Khan. On the other hand, a Rampur royalty, Nawab Kazim Ali Khan, attempted to win the seat on Congress ticket.
In this Muslim majority constituency, Kazim was not the only Muslim aspirant for the seat. Bahujan Samaj Party’s Sadaqat Hussain and Aam Aadmi Party’s Faizal Khan tried to win the seat.
Despite three Muslim rivals, which could have divided the Muslim votes making victory likely for Akash, Khan triumphed.
Kazim could win only about 4,000 votes, Hussain just about the same number of votes, Faizal less than 2,000 votes and Akash 76,000 votes.
Interestingly, Khan won the seat bettering his previous performance and bagged 1.31 lakh votes against his 1.02 lakh votes in 2017 and 95,000 votes in 2012 when the SP government came to power with a full majority for the first time in the state and Akhilesh Yadav became the chief minister.
“Sabse zyada bulldozer Rampur mein chala, lekin BJP jeet nahi payi. Azam Khan jeet gaye,” SP ally Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) chief Om Prakash Rajbhar had commented on the Rampur results.
Rajbhar won his Zahoorabad seat in Ghazipur in the recent elections and in his statement meant that the BJP government used bulldozers the maximum in Rampur to demolish constructions related to Khan, yet he won.
Rampur as a district, and Rampur as an assembly constituency, has 52% Muslims of the total population. “This, combined with loyalty to the Khan family, rejects even other Muslim rivals on the seat. Many felt that this time it would be tough for Khan with so much of slander against him, the cases against him, he being in jail, and three Muslim candidates and BJP’s Akash Saxena contesting against him. But Khan Saheb won effortlessly -- without any campaign,” said an SP functionary in Rampur, preferring not to be named.
Khan is in jail since September 2019 with 80 criminal cases against him related to land encroachment and criminal intimidation.
If Khan resigns the assembly seat, it will necessitate by-polls. “The SP is likely to field a family member of Khan, who has never contested an election,” said an SP leader of Rampur. Khan’s wife Tazeen Fatima is a Rajya Sabha member, while his son Abdullah Azam Khan had won another Rampur district seat, Suar, in the recently concluded elections.
Since Khan he began contesting the Rampur seat in 1989, only once any rival party could win it -- that was Congress in 1996. Tazeen Fatima won the seat when he resigned from it after winning the Rampur Lok Sabha seat in 2019.
