By PTI
RAMPUR: As his absence from the SP MLAs meet fuelled speculation about his resentment with the party leadership, senior leader Azam Khan on Sunday said he is a “poor person” without any base and does not have any reason for being upset.
Khan, who held immense sway in the party during the SP rule, was released from the Sitapur jail on Friday after spending 27 months in judicial custody in dozens of cases.
Asked if he would end his “continuing resentment”, Khan told reporters, “I am getting this information about the resentment only from you. I don’t understand any reason.”
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He said there should be some “basis” for resentment.
“I am a man without any base, so where will the basis for resentment come from? I am a poor person now and live in a bylane. I am a poor person who lives in such a congested lane that not even a single four-wheeler could enter it,” he added.
Khan who skipped the Samajwadi Party’s legislators’ meet on Sunday, a day ahead of the beginning of the maiden session of the Uttar Pradesh assembly, also said, “The Vidhan Sabha is not a new place for me. I will be entering it for the 10th time.”
Apparently referring to Jauhar University, founded during the Akhilesh Yadav government with he himself playing a major role in its establishment, Khan said, “If this university is demolished or bulldozer is moved over it, its razed remains will narrate the history more than the standing building.”
“I want to give pens to children and the mission is still alive,” he added.
Azam also visited the Rampur district jail on Sunday to meet his close aide Guddu Massod who has been lodged there in judicial custody in a case of forgery.
Khan visited the jail along with his MLA son from the Suar assembly segment, Abdullah Azam, and met other jail inmates also.
Azam Khan was released from the Sitapur jail on Friday, a day after the Supreme Court granted him interim bail in a cheating case.
He was lodged in jail for the last 27 months, facing trial in several cases, including that of land grabbing.
Earlier amid complaints from Khan’s camp that SP supremo Akhilesh Yadav has been “ignoring” Khan and the Muslim community, though it backed the SP in the UP assembly polls, the party veteran had not met SP MLA Ravidas Mehrotra when he had visited him in the Sitapur jail on April 24.
But only a day later on April 25, he had met Congress leader and spiritual guru Pramod Krishnam.
