LUCKNOW: In a major relief to Samajwadi Party’s Ghazipur MP Afzal Ansari, the Allahabad High Court, on Monday, set aside Ghazipur MP-MLA court order sentencing him for four years jail term in a Gangster Act case comprising the murder of the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Krishnanand Rai in 2005 and Rungta abduction-murder case of 1997.Following the High Court order, Afzal Ansari, the elder brother of former gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, will continue as the Lok Sabha MP. Mukhtar Ansari, who died due to cardiac arrest during treatment in Banda Medical College as he was incarcerated in Banda district jail owing to a number of criminal cases against him, on March 28, this year, was also an accused in the same case.Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh of the Allahabad High Court had reserved the judgment on Ansari’s appeal on July 4, this year. A special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur on April 29, 2023 had convicted Afzal Ansari and Mukhtar Ansari, an ex-legislator in the case. It had awarded a 10-year imprisonment to Mukhtar Ansari. The brothers were booked under the Gangster Act in connection with the murder of BJP MP legislator Krishnanand Rai in November 2005 and the abduction-murder of Varanasi trader Nand Kishore Rungta in 1997.As Afzal Ansari had challenged his conviction in Allahabad High Court, the court refused to suspend Afzal Ansari’s conviction but granted him bail on July 24, 2023.On the other hand, the state government and Krishnanand Rai’s son, Piyush Kumar Rai, had filed an appeal seeking an increase in his sentence. After High Court refused to suspend Ansari’s sentence, he moved to Supreme Court of India which, on December 14, 2023, suspended his conviction in the case paving the way for the restoration of his membership in the Lok Sabha as he was disqualified after Ghazipur MP/MLA court’s order which had sentenced him to four year jail term. Though, the Court held that Ghazipur MP could attend the House proceedings, he will not be able to cast his votes or draw perks or monetary benefits associated with his capacity as MP. A bench of Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Ujjal Bhuyan, by a 2:1 majority, partially allowed Ansari’s appeal while setting down a deadline of June 30, 2024, for the Allahabad high court to decide on his plea against the conviction. Justices Kant and Bhuyan ruled in favour of Ansari’s plea. Justice Datta said his appeal should fail. The majority view held that the constitutional court needed to balance the two chief interests in a democracy the integrity of the electoral process and the rights of the people of the constituencies.If the Allahabad High Court had upheld the local court’s order on Monday, Ansari would have had faced disqualification from Lok Sabha seat. As per the Representation of the People Act, any MP or state legislator sentenced to imprisonment of two years or more shall be disqualified “from the date of such conviction” and remain disqualified for another six years after serving time.
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