When Mau MLA Abbas Ansari was stripped of his membership of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly following his two-year jail sentencing in a case of hate speech, he wasn’t the first to join the list of disqualified MLAs from the state. He will, most certainly, not be last.
Son of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, Abbas Ansari became MLA for the first time in 2022 when he won the Mau Sadar assembly seat on an SBSP (Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party) ticket under the Samajwadi Party-led alliance.
After his termination from membership of the legislative house, which comes under the Representation of the People Act (that allows barring if the court sentences a member to two years or more), Ansari’s seat now lays vacant.
SBSP is currently an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government, and the party’s president, Om Prakash Rajbhar, is a cabinet minister in the state.
Ansari joins others in a long list of disqualifiers, according to the website of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly. Other disqualified MLAs of UP in the current 18th Legislative Assembly are Azam Khan (Samajwadi Party), his son Abdullah Azam Khan (SP), Haji Irfan Solanki (SP), Vikram Singh (BJP) and Ramdular (BJP).
Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in October 2022 after a court sentenced him to three years in jail in a 2019 hate speech case. He represented the Rampur assembly constituency.
His son and SP Party MLA, Abdullah Azam Khan, followed suit when he was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in February 2023, days after a court sentenced him to a two-year imprisonment in a 15-year-old case. He represented the Suar seat in Rampur district.
Abdullah Azam Khan’s case pertained to a dharna on a highway after his cavalcade was stopped by police for checking following an attack on a CRPF camp in Rampur on December 31, 2007.
SP MLA Irfan Solanki was disqualified after he, his younger brother, and three others were sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment in connection with setting fire to a woman’s house in a bid to grab her land. He represented the Sisamau assembly constituency in Kanpur.
Then there’s BJP MLA, Vikram Singh Saini, who was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly with effect from October 2022 after he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots case. Saini was an MLA from Khatauli in Muzaffarnagar.
BJP MLA from Duddhi assembly constituency in Sonbhadra district, Ramdular Gond was disqualified in December 2023 after being sentenced to 25 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a girl in 2014.
Earlier, in the 17th Legislative Assembly, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP MLA from Bangarmau in Unnao, was disqualified in 2020 after being convicted in a rape case. Sengar had already been expelled by the BJP.
BJP MLA from Gosaiganj in Ayodhya district, Indra Pratap Tiwari, was also disqualified in December 2021 after he was convicted and sentenced by a court in a 28-year-old fake mark sheet case.
On April 19, 2019, Hamirpur BJP MLA, Ashok Chandel, was disqualified from the assembly after he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case.
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