india

Updated: Jul 24, 2019 08:59 IST

Both houses of the state legislature witnessed noisy scenes when Samajwadi Party members protested against the cases lodged against senior party leader and Rampur MP Mohd Azam Khan.

In the assembly, the SP members demanded withdrawal of the cases against Khan.

Raising the issue during zero hour, SP member Narendra Verma said the district administration had registered 26 cases against Khan in the matter related with Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar University. It has been alleged that farmers’ land was encroached to build the university. Khan has denied the charge. Leader of opposition Ram Govind Chaudhary said the state government was trying to suppress the opposition. Khan had opened the university to impart education to deprived sections in the society, he said. Those whose land has been acquired for the university have been paid adequately, he said.

A committee of senior SP leaders, which visited Rampur,ound the district administration had not got the land measured. Parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Khanna said the SP leaders’ allegations were baseless.

Khanna further said a large number of the farmers whose land had been grabbed belonged to the Muslim community and they handed over a memorandum to the DM, demanding probe and action against land-grabbers. The registrar confirmed that land owned by the farmers had been grabbed illegally, he said.

However, Chaudhary said, the university had purchased the land legally and the BJP was hatching a conspiracy against Azam Khan. As agitated SP MLAs rushed into the well, , speaker Hriday Narayan Dikshit adjourned the house for the day.

In the Vidhan Parishad, the SP members staged a walkout on the same issue. Samajwadi Party leaders Ahmad Hasan, Basudev Yadav and others alleged the process of lodging ‘fake’ FIRs against the Rampur MP and his family members began even since the BJP government came to power in the state. They claimed that the SP’s 21-member inquiry committee that visited Rampur on July 20 found that the Jauhar University was founded in 2003 in accordance with the law.