Yogi govt to take back land allotted to Azam Khan's trust

Lucknow : The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to take back government land from jailed Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's Jauhar Trust. A decision to this effect was taken at a cabinet meeting held here on Tuesday.

The land of Secondary Education Department was allotted to Azam Khan's Jauhar Trust at a rent of Rs 100 annually by the then SP government.

BJP MLA Akash Saxena had alleged that during the tenure of SP, Azam had got the land of Murtaza Vidyalaya transferred in the name of Jauhar Trust. The office of Samajwadi Party was also built on the land. Earlier last month, the Income Tax (I-T) department had raided the premises of Azam Khan.

The raid was conducted in several other districts of the state, including Rampur, Lucknow, Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, and Saharanpur. In January 2023, Khan had made a statement in which he called himself the "messiah of the poor" and accused the government of harassing them.

Khan had told the media that he was innocent and that the government was "deliberately implicating him." "Everything is being done to trouble me, I have not committed any crime. Till now the capitalists have built universities. I am a poor man, I made a university which does not charge fees for orphans," Khan had said.