Mau: Days after the Allahabad High Court suspended his conviction, Abbas Ansari has been reinstated as a member of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, officials confirmed on Monday.
Ansari, elected from the Mau Assembly seat in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections, was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment in May this year in connection with a three-year-old hate speech case, which had led to his disqualification from the Assembly.
The 33-year-old, son of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari, was booked on March 3, 2022, for a campaign speech in which he allegedly threatened to “teach a lesson” to administrative officials in Mau after the elections.
He challenged the conviction in the Mau Sessions Court, which on July 5 stayed the sentence but did not stay the conviction. Ansari then approached the Allahabad High Court, which last month suspended his conviction.
On August 20, the High Court observed that “refusal to stay his conviction amounts to injustice not only to him but also to the electorate which elected him,” citing the 2024 Supreme Court ruling against the disqualification of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi (Rahul Gandhi vs Purnesh Ishwarbhai Modi, 2024).
Justice Sameer Jain clarified that disqualification affects not only the right of a public representative to continue in public life but also the rights of the electorate to be represented. The High Court also noted that its observations were limited to whether the conviction order could be stayed during the pendency of the appeal.