The Samajwadi Party has named the controversial doctor – Dr Kafeel Khan as the party’s candidate from the Deoria-Kushinagar legislative council seat for the upcoming MLC elections in Uttar Pradesh.
Dr Kafeel Khan was named as the main accused in the deaths of several kids due to lack of oxygen cylinders at Gorakhpur’s Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College in 2017, where he worked as a paediatrician.
According to the reports, Khan is expected to file a nomination on Wednesday.
Earlier on Tuesday, Kafeel Khan met Akhilesh Yadav and presented him a book on the Gorakhpur hospital tragedy.
After the humiliating loss during the recently concluded assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party wants to field new candidates and prioritise new people instead of old faces. The party is also expected to deny tickets to non-performing sitting MLCs. In addition, some MLA candidates, who contested in the UP assembly polls 2022 and lost by a narrow margin, may also get a ticket in the MLC elections.
The MLC elections are scheduled to be held on April 9 for 36 seats under local bodies’ constituency of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council. The counting of votes will take place on April 12.
Dr Khan is presently suspended from his job over medical negligence charges levelled against him in 2017 after 72 infants had died in BRD medical college in Gorakhpur due to lack of oxygen supply. In January 2020, he was arrested for his speech at Aligarh Muslim University on December 10, 2019, during anti-CAA protests.
Khan had made some inflammatory remarks in his speech delivered during the anti-CAA protests in Aligarh Muslim University. He had reportedly remarked against Home Minister Amit Shah that he was a murderer whose clothes are foul with blood.
Khan had also said that the CAA made Muslims second class citizens, a complete lie because CAA had nothing to do with existing Indian citizens. He made several false allegations, adding that the students in the RSS run schools are taught that people with beards are terrorists and that with the CAA, the government has told Muslims that India was not their country.