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India: BSP's Afzal Ansari disqualified as Lok Sabha member

The politician from Ghazipur was convicted and sentenced to four-year imprisonment in a kidnapping-and-murder case by a court in Uttar Pradesh

Bahujan Samaj Party's Afzal Ansari was disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha on Monday after he was convicted and sentenced to four-year imprisonment in a kidnapping-and-murder case by a court in Uttar Pradesh.

Ansari, the Lok Sabha member from Ghazipur, was sentenced to four years in jail by an MP/MLA court on Saturday. His brother, criminal-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, was also convicted in the same case and was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

The brothers were booked under the UP Gangsters Act in connection with the murder of the then MLA from Ghazipur, Krishnanad Rai, on November 29, 2005, along with the kidnapping and murder of Varanasi-based trader Nand Kishore Rungta in 1997.

"Consequent upon his conviction...Afzal Ansari, Member of Lok Sabha representing the Ghazipur Parliamentary Constituency of Uttar Pradesh, stands disqualified from the membership of Lok Sabha from the date of his conviction i.e. 29 April, 2023, in terms of the provisions of Article 102(1)(e) of the Constitution of India read with Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951," according to a Lok Sabha secretariat notification.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi recently lost his Lok Sabha membership after he was convicted in a 2019 defamation case and sentenced to two years in jail.