The Supreme Court division bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and BV Nagarathna upheld an order of the Allahabad High Court disqualifying Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Abdullah Azam Khan due to a discrepancy in his date of birth provided in official records on Monday.

The Allahabad High Court dealt a major blow to Khan's electoral prospects in 2019 when the petitioner, one Nawab Kazam Ali Khan, filed a petition alleging that the young politician from the Samajwadi Party had falsely represented himself to be older in order to contest the assembly elections.

Khan was arrested in February 2020, along with his father, Azam Khan, and mother, Tazeen Fatma, on several charges, including cheating, for allegedly fabricating his birth certificate. Fatma was granted bail in December of the same year. Khan was not released from the Sitapur Jail in Uttar Pradesh until January 2022. After 27 months in prison, his father was released in May.

Nawab Kazam Ali Khan filed a High Court petition in 2019 alleging that the son of senior SP leader Azam Khan had lied about his age in his election affidavit.

Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, who represented Abdullah Khan before the High Court, argued that the petitioner had not discharged their initial burden of proving the allegation, which could have been done by putting evidence on record. The crux of his argument was that the appellant had satisfactorily established the factum of his birth by relying on hospital records and correlating such records with primary and documentary evidence in accordance with Sections 60 and 61 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, on the other hand, contended that the petitioner had failed to discharge his burden of rejecting or displacing this evidence because he had relied solely on the date provided in a school register, which was unsupported by either primary or documentary evidence.

Upon hearing the submission by the parties, the court observed, "Abdullah Azam Khan was born only once. He cannot have two dates of birth. We will have to record a finding as to the correct date of birth."

Case Details

Mohd. Abdullah Azam Khan v. Nawab Kazim Ali Khan 

CA No. 104/2020