New Delhi: It has been three days since a court in Uttar Pradesh handed a 25-year prison sentence to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Ramdular Gond for the 2014 rape of a minor girl in Sonbhadra.
He was convicted for rape, criminal intimidation, and an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).
Despite the court’s decision, the state legislative Assembly has not yet moved to disqualify Gond, highlighting a sharp contrast to the promptness with which the opposition Samajwadi Party (SP) MLAs were disqualified over the last year, following their conviction in criminal cases.
Gond is an MLA from Duddhi Assembly constituency. The Duddhi seat is reserved for members belonging to the Scheduled Tribes community.
The MP-MLA court of additional district judge (I) Ehsan Ullah Khan held Gond guilty on December 12, for raping a minor girl in 2014 when his wife was the village pradhan.
On December 15, the court sentenced Gond to 25 years of imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on him.
According to the Representation of the People Act, 1951, a lawmaker convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for two or more years “shall be disqualified from the date of such conviction” and shall remain disqualified for a further period of six months following his or her release.
Gond was elected an MLA for the first time in 2022. He defeated the SP candidate by a paper-thin margin of less than 6,300 votes.
SP President Akhilesh Yadav took to X (formerly Twitter) to question why, despite his sentencing, Gond had not yet been disqualified.
“Is he being provided the special respect and impunity because he is a BJP MLA? The public is asking whether the bulldozer action will take place today or tomorrow,” Yadav tweeted on December 16.
This was not the first instance of the main opposition party in UP raising questions about double standards concerning the disqualification of legislators by the Legislative Assembly.
On February 15, Abdullah Azam, the son of senior SP leader Azam Khan, was disqualified as an MLA from Suar constituency in Rampur. The UP Secretariat notification about Azam’s disqualification was issued just two days after a court in Moradabad convicted him and sentenced him to two years in prison in a 15-year-old case under charges of wrongful restraint and assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from discharge of duty.
Azam Khan’s disqualification notification was issued within a day on October 28, 2022.
He’s the most recognisable Muslim leader in the state. He was convicted in a hate speech case in October 2022 for making comments against chief minister Yogi Adityanath while appealing to Muslims to not divide their votes in 2019.
The conviction was later overturned by a court.
In contrast, BJP MLA Vikram Saini was disqualified on November 7, 2022, almost a month after a court in Muzaffarnagar awarded him a two-year imprisonment in connection with a hate speech case during the Muzaffarnagar communal violence in 2013.
The MP/MLA court in Muzaffarnagar convicted Saini, an MLA from Khatauli, on October 11, 2022.
A week before Saini’s eventual disqualification, Chaudhary Jayant Singh, president of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, an ally of the SP, had even written to the UP Assembly Speaker, Satish Mahana, questioning the delay in dismissing the BJP MLA, in contrast to the expeditious manner in which Azam Khan was disqualified and his seat Rampur Sadar declared vacant.
However, it must be noted that the disqualification in all three cases were made applicable from the day of the conviction.
In the recent past, another BJP MLA had been convicted for rape and disqualified as a lawmaker under the saffron party rule in UP.
In February 2020, during Adityanath’s first term in power, Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a BJP MLA from Bangermau seat in Unnao, was disqualified after he was sentenced to life for raping a teenager.
Gond’s disqualification does not alter the political equation in the state, as Duddhi, his constituency, is one of only two reserved for STs in the 403-member Assembly.
Even if we exclude Gond, the BJP has 253 MLAs, much more than the required 202 to have a majority. The National Democratic Alliance’s number climbs to 278 if we add the seats held by the BJP’s allies, Apna Dal (Soneylal) (13), NISHAD Party (6) and the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (six).
The SP, on the other hand, has 109 MLAs while its ally, the RLD, has nine.
The Congress and the Jansatta Dal Loktantrik of Kunda MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya have two each.
The Bahujan Samaj Party, which ruled UP with a full majority from 2007 to 2012, is the smallest party in the state legislature with a single MLA.
Note: An earlier version of this article erroneously referred to Ramdular Goud as an MP in the headline.