Samajwadi Party MLA Irfan Solanki, his younger brother and three others were sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment on Friday in connection with setting fire to a woman’s house in a bid to grab her land.
The sentencing has opened the doors for Solanki’s disqualification from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.
According to the Representation of the People Act, any public representative imprisoned for two or more years will be disqualified from the Assembly from the date of conviction. Not only this, after completion of the jail term, the person will not be eligible for membership of the House for the next six years.
Police had booked Irfan Solanki, his brother Rizwan Solanki and about four dozen others for rioting and arson 19 months ago.
The session MP-MLA court presided by judge Satyendra Nath Tripathi convicted the MLA, his brother, as well as Shauqat Ali, Mohammad Sharif and Izrail on Monday while the quantum of sentence was pronounced on Friday.
District Government Counsel Dileep Awasthi told PTI that the court also imposed a fine of Rs 30,500 on each of the convicts, failing which they would have to serve jail term for three more months.
Irfan Solanki is a four-time MLA, who first got elected in 2007 from Arya Nagar. He also won Sisamau Assembly Constituency in the 2012, 2017 and 2022 elections. His father Mushtaq Solanki was also a two-time MLA from the Arya Nagar Assembly constituency in Kanpur.
In October 2022, Samajwadi Party MLA from Rampur Azam Khan was disqualified from the membership of the Legislative Assembly after being sentenced by a court in a hate speech case. In February 2023, his MLA son Abdullah Azam was disqualified from the Assembly after being convicted in a case of obstructing government work and holding a sit-in demonstration.
BJP MLA from Muzaffarnagar’s Khatauli Vikram Singh Saini was disqualified from October 2022 after being sentenced to two years in jail in a case related to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.
Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP MLA from Bangarmau in Unnao, was disqualified from the UP Assembly in 2020 after being convicted in a rape case. Sengar had already been expelled by the BJP.
In 2009, Samajwadi Party MP from Faizabad Mitrasen Yadav was disqualified as a member of Parliament after a court sentenced him to seven years in prison in a fraud case.
BJP MLA from Gosaiganj in Ayodhya district Indra Pratap Tiwari was also disqualified in the last session after he was convicted and sentenced by a court in a fake marksheet case. On April 19, 2019, Hamirpur BJP MLA Ashok Chandel was disqualified from the assembly after he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case.
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