Elections over,Mulayam cracks down: Azam Khan expelled from SP

SP state president Shivpal,who made the announcement,accused Khan of anti-party activities and indiscipline. Khan was not attending party meetings,making objectionable remarks and levelling baseless charges against senior leaders of the party,he said.

Khan described his expulsion as “a sad experience” and blamed SP general secretary Amar Singh for it. “The party should maintain a distance from people like Amar Singh. I am not saying he should be ousted from the party but he should be asked to do what he is best at,which is certainly not politics,” he said.

On whether he might now join the Congress,Khan quipped,“When my own party can throw me out after 25 years of loyalty,what can be said of an association of 25 days?”

During the Lok Sabha election,Khan had openly opposed SP candidate Jaya Prada and backed the Congress’s Noor Bano. But Jaya Prada not only won the Rampur seat,she got more votes than Noor Bano in the Rampur assembly segment,which Khan represents in the UP Assembly.The conflict within the SP escalated after Mulayam joined hands with former BJP chief minister Kalyan Singh for the Lok Sabha polls. Khan objected strongly,recalling that it was during Kalyan Singh’s regime that the Babri Masjid was demolished.

He openly criticised Mulayam’s decision and stopped attending party meetings. Several other Muslim leaders like Shafiqur Reham Birk,Salim Sherwani and Shahid Siddiqui too objected,and left the SP. Former advocate-general SMA Kazmi also deserted Mulayam over his ‘friendship’ with Kalyan.

During the election campaign,Khan got involved in repeated slanging matches with Amar Singh,who at one stage issued a dramatic threat to leave the SP if Khan was not disciplined. Days before the vote,Khan was accused of distributing CDs containing obscene morphed pictures of Jaya Prada.

Welcoming Azam Khan’s expulsion,Amar Singh said that the “level of harm” to the party’s poll prospects would have been lesser if the action was taken much earlier. “It would have been proper and prudent if this decision had been taken much earlier… level of harm to the party would have been lesser,” Singh told reporters in New Delhi.