Rampur Assembly By-Polls 2022 -Rampur fortress only for Azam Khan, or also for Samajwadi Party?

Rampur Assembly seat (37-Rampur or Rampur Sadar) in Uttar Pradesh is going for by-polls on Monday (December 5). The by-poll seat has been necessitated after the disqualification of SP MLA Azam Khan following his conviction and three-year jail term in a hate speech case.

It has been a stronghold of the Samajwadi Party since 1993, losing to Congress only once in 1996.

And Rampur is not about Samajwadi Party, but it is all about Azam Khan. His bastion for over four decades now, the Rampur Assembly seat has brought Khan to power ten times out of his eleven attempts. Even in 2019, when his wife Tazeen Fatma was the MLA, it was because she won the seat in a by-poll after Azam Khan resigned in 2019 after winning the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency.

The Rampur seat has been a hotbed of high-voltage political drama in the recent past. Always the hothouse for the bitter contest between Azam Khan and his nemesis Nawab Kazim Ali Khan (a.k.a Naved Miyan) — the Nawab from Rampur royal family — the constituency dethroned its titular ruler over 40 years ago. The feud started before Naved Miyan’s times as his mother Begum Noor Bano and Azam Khan also never saw eye-to-eye. The Begum was an MP in 1996 and 1999.

In fact, so firmly cemented the rivalry between Khan and the royals of Rampur is that a few weeks ago, Congress leader and ex-MLA Naved Miyan was seen openly supporting the BJP candidate against Azam Khan. The grand old party has expelled the Nawab of Rampur for six years for anti-party activities. But Naved Miyan goes on undeterred, still vocal in his support for anyone who opposes Azam Khan in Rampur.

Rampur has always brought Azam Khan to power, no matter what his political leaning was, or what party gave him the ticket. From Janata Party (Secular) in 1980, Lok Dal in 1985, Janata Dal in 1989, Janata Party in 1991 and Samajwadi Party since 1993, Azam Khan has switched camps across the political spectrum quite a few times in the early part of his career. But Rampur almost never wavered.

Lately, however, Azam Khan’s woes have been unending. On October 27, Khan was found guilty by the court of hate speech against Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the then DM of Rampur during the Lok Sabha elections of 2019. The Rampur MP-MLA court convicted him and sentenced him to three years in jail. A day later, on October 28, the UP Legislative Assembly Secretariat disqualified him, necessitating a bypoll.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had denied him interim bail for campaigning ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls in March 2022. Despite that Azam Khan had emerged as the tallest leader of the Rampur yet again, winning the seat despite the odds.

This time, Samajwadi Party has fielded Asim Raja — a close associate of Azam Khan — as the party’s candidate. Raja filed his nomination in the presence of Azam Khan, sending out a message that he has the backing of the senior leader.

However, the BJP is also not far behind in trying to breach SP’s bastion. Raja had contested the Rampur Lok Sabha by-poll as the Samajwadi candidate earlier this year but lost to BJP's Ghanshyam Lodhi. And BJP wants to make the most of its gains. While it has Rampur parliamentary constituency in its bag, the Assembly seat has been hard to pocket. Like the Assembly elections of February-March 2022, the BJP is yet again fielding Akash Saxena. He is the son of former BJP minister Shiv Bahadur Saxena, and Akash’s claim to fame so far has been the sheer number of complaints he has filed against Azam Khan.

It all started with the complaint against Khan in May 2017 that his remarks had affected the morale of Army personnel. While there have been 87 cases filed against him, 84 were registered in the two years after the BJP came into power in UP in 2017. It is noteworthy that Akash Saxena has lodged as many as 33 cases against Azam Khan, and he is the eyewitness in all the cases.

While the labyrinths of the law seem to provide no respite to Azam Khan, it is now a test of loyalty for Rampur. Will it stand by Khan’s confidant as it has been with him and his family for so many decades? Or will BJP breach Samajwadi Party’s fortress?