Supreme Court dismisses plea against High Court decision setting aside Abdullah Azam Khan’s election to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly

Bench finds no manifest error in the High Court decision, which concerned the existence of two birth certificates of Khan, who allegedly gave the wrong date of birth while filing his nomination papers

The Supreme Court on November 7, 2022 dismissed a plea against an Allahabad High Court decision setting aside the election of Mohammad Abdullah Azam Khan, son of Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan, to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in 2017.

A Bench led by Justice Ajay Rastogi found no manifest error in the High Court decision, which concerned the existence of two birth certificates of Abdullah Azam, who allegedly gave the wrong date of birth while filing his nomination papers for the 2017 elections.

The High Court had concluded that he was under 25 years of age and not eligible to contest at the time of filing the nomination papers as the Samajwadi Party candidate from the Suar constituency in 2017.

Abdullah Azam was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly with effect from December 16, 2019, but was re-elected from the same seat in the 2022 Assembly polls.

In a separate concurring opinion to affirm the High Court’s decision, Justice B.V. Nagarathna set aside the appellant’s election and opined that the acceptance of his nomination was “improper”.

The appellant had contended that he duly attained the age of 25 years in terms of Article 173(b) of the Constitution for contesting the 2017 election and certain documents “incorrectly and inadvertently” registered 1993 as his birth year, which was later rectified to 1990.

Rejecting the submission, the court observed that 1993 was consistently the appellant’s birth year in records and it was only when he became keen on politics that a contrary claim was made.