- Azam Khan Punishment Muslims have no one to pull with Samajwadi Party so Lok Sabha can take a hit from SP

- Like Mukhtar Ansari or Atiq Ahmad, crimes including murder, assault have not been registered against Azam Khan. Azam Khan was a lawyer before entering politics and formed unions in the name of fighting for the rights of ordinary workers. Because of these unions, Azam became powerful. This is why Azam's politics lasted so long. Atiq Ahmad and Mukhtar Ansari's politics remained confined to their respective areas while Azam Khan became a state level leader. Rather, it is no exaggeration to say that he established himself as the greatest Muslim leader in UP.

Manata Azam Khan, a staunch Muslim leader of Uttar Pradesh, along with his wife Tanjin Fatima and son Abdullah Azam have been sentenced to seven years each in the fake birth certificate case. Apart from husband and wife, Azam Khan's family has two sons and after the MP-MLA court of Rampur convicted three of the four people, almost the entire family of Azam has gone to jail. The sentence is the last nail in the coffin of Azam Khan's political career.

Azam Khan has long been at loggerheads with the Yogi Adityanath government. Seeing that one after another cases were coming against Azam, it seemed that the board of Azam Khanan, who has been the king of the Rampur area for more than four decades, will fall. This has come true as the MP-MLA court sentenced him to seven years and now the possibility of Azam being able to sit again is almost gone.

Azam, Tanjin and Abdullah have been convicted in the case of forging a birth certificate to exaggerate Abdullah's age. Azam Abdullah became MLA in 2017 after winning from Swar assembly seat of Rampur district. At that time, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh local leader and now BJP MLA Akash Saxena complained that at least 25 years of age is required to contest assembly elections but Abdullah is not 25 years old. A false birth certificate was produced to show that Abdullah was of age to contest the election. Saxena claims that Abdullah has multiple birth certificates.

Following this complaint, the Election Commission ordered an investigation. The Rampur District Magistrate investigated and submitted a report to the commission, concluding that Abdullah had messed up the date of birth. Based on this, Saxena filed a complaint against Azam Khan, his wife Tanjin and Abdullah in Rampur for creating fake documents. In the police investigation in this case, the police claimed that Azam had created a false certificate using his identity and that Tanjin had supported him.

Abdullah was born at Queen Mary Hospital in Lucknow. Azam Khan appealed in the High Court against the Election Commission's disqualification of Abdullah from the post of MLA. Azam's family brought as a witness the woman doctor who delivered the baby at the hospital, but the High Court did not accept the testimony of the doctor. Now Azam's family has been found guilty in this case.

Azam Khan has the option of going to the Supreme Court if he does not get relief from the High Court against this sentence, but seeing that Yogi Adityanath has washed his hands behind Azam and his family, it is unlikely that Azam's family will get any relief. Most likely, Azam will get bail and come out of jail, but nothing more is likely to happen. With the conviction in the fake birth certificate case, Azam's political innings seems to have ended.

It is not known whether Azam will sit again or not but very few leaders would have enjoyed the reign like Azam. Many other Muslim leaders came to Uttar Pradesh but very few leaders had the power like Azam Khan. Due to this influence, the Samajwadi Party became strong in UP and both Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh became Chief Ministers. Azam's contribution in turning UP Muslims towards Sagamate SP is huge.

Most Muslim leaders in UP have criminal background. Leaders like Atiq Ahmad and Mukhtar Ansari turned gangsters into politicians and rose to the fore in politics through muscle power. Azam Khan's politics remained different from his. There have been allegations of bullying and other allegations against him, but the reality is that Azam is not involved in criminal activities.

Unlike Mukhtar Ansari or Atiq Ahmad, no crimes including murder, assault have been registered against Azam Khan. Azam Khan was a lawyer before entering politics and formed unions in the name of fighting for the rights of ordinary workers. Because of these unions, Azam became powerful. This is why Azam's politics lasted so long. Atiq Ahmad and Mukhtar Ansari's politics remained confined to their respective areas while Azam Khan became a state level leader. Rather, it is no exaggeration to say that he established himself as the greatest Muslim leader in UP.

Most of the cases against Azam Khan are alleged by his supporters to be due to political graft. If any leader gets caught in politics, he always defends it. It is the job of the court to decide whether this defense is true or not, so in Azam Khan's case, the court will also decide, but Azam's departure from the political throne will make a big difference in UP politics.

The Yogi Adityanath government has started targeting Muslim leaders of anti-BJP parties one after another. Due to this there is confusion among Muslim leaders. Samajwadi Party is the only party that can challenge BJP in UP. Mayawati's BSP and Congress have become massless parties. Due to this, majority of Muslims are with SP but Samajwadi Party does not have another Muslim leader who can save Muslims and keep them with SP after Azam is punished. In these circumstances, the SP may suffer a blow in the Lok Sabha elections.

Azam ended the power of the Nawab of Rampur by forming a union

Rampur was once dominated by the Nawab family, but Azam Khan, who came from an ordinary family, destroyed this dominance. In all the economic activities of Rampur, the Nawab family did as they said. Even in the elections, only the members of the Nawab family standing from the Congress were elected to the Lok Sabha and the Legislative Assembly. With the Nawab family starting from Aslam Khan to Syed Murtaza Ali Khan

The people involved were the MLAs of Rampur till 1980. Zulfikar Ali Khan was also elected five times in the Lok Sabha.

Azam Khan's father worked as a bidi maker but educated Azam Khan and made him a lawyer. After doing LLB from Aligarh Muslim University, Azam Khan started practicing law. Azam challenged the supremacy of the Nawab family by forming a union of beedi makers, rickshaw pullers, hand shal operators etc.

As Azamkha's popularity grew, the Janata Party fielded him for the first time in 1977 against Murtaza Ali Khan of the Nawab family, but Azam lost. In 1980, Azam Rajnarayan's Janata Party stood up from the secular and won and never looked back. Azam Khan himself has won ten times while his wife and son Abdullah have also become MLAs by winning from this seat. Azam Khan has won in the Lok Sabha as well.

Amid Azam's influence, Zulfiqar of the Nawab family and later his wife Noorba became MPs, but Rampur remained Azam's stronghold.

84 cases against Azam in two years, also complaints of goat-buffalo theft

In Uttar Pradesh, after Yogi Adityanath became the Chief Minister in March 2017, the registration of FIR against Azam Khan began. 84 FIRs were registered against Azam Khan in the span of two years starting from Yogi's inauguration as Chief Minister till the Lok Sabha elections in March-April 2019. As of now, the number of FIRs against Azam Khan has crossed the century mark to more than a hundred, so it is difficult for Azam to come out.

The most serious complaint in the complaint against Azam Khan is the forcible seizure of land from farmers for the establishment of Mohammad Ali Jauhar University. There are other complaints of corruption and fraud, while there are some FIRs that look very childish.

Complaints of stealing a goat, stealing a buffalo, robbing an old woman and robbing her of her jewellery, robbing a person and extorting Rs 16,500 from him have also been registered against Azam.