Mukhtar Ansari's MLA son Abbas joins list of infamy with disqualification from UP Assembly

Abbas Ansari, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) MLA, was sentenced to two years imprisonment in a 2022 hate speech case by a special MP-MLA court on Saturday.

Lucknow: Abbas Ansari, an MLA of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP), an alliance partner of the BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh lost membership of the assembly after he was convicted in a hate speech case lodged against him during the 2022 assembly polls in the state.

As Ansari was sentenced to two years imprisonment in the case, he was disqualified as a member of the House from the Mau assembly seat.

The state secretariat opened on Sunday and the Election Commission was informed about his disqualification, sources here said.

Speaker of the state assembly Satish Mahana on Sunday declared the seat vacant.

A court in Mau had on Saturday found Ansari and his friend Masood Ansari guilty in the hate speech case and sentenced them to two years imprisonment besides imposing a fine on both of them.

The court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate had completed hearing of the case earlier and had fixed May 31 for delivering the verdict.

According to the prosecution, Ansari, son of gangster Mukhtar Ansari, while addressing an election rally in March 2022 threatened the Mau district administration and said that they would teach it a lesson after the polls.

A case was lodged in this connection by the police at the Kotwali police station.

Although Ansari was an MLA from the SBSP, he was closer to the Samajwadi Party (SP). His father Mukhtar Ansari represented the seat several times from SP and also as an independent.