Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav plans to meet general secretary and founding member Azam Khan in Rampur prison on Thursday to discuss issues related to the 2027 Assembly election campaign, party sources said.
Akhilesh had allegedly been avoiding such a meeting but the fear of losing the party’s core Muslim votes seems to have compelled him to reach out to arguably the most well-known minority leader in the heartland state.
Feroze Khan, an SP leader in Moradabad, told reporters: “They both are big leaders of the party. Obviously, they will discuss politics, besides other issues. We have not been informed about their exact topic of discussion.”
“Azam Khan is not well and that is also a reason why Akhilesh Yadav will visit him,” he added.
Charged with many crimes including intimidation, money laundering, forgery, land grabbing and violation of the model code of conduct for elections, the 78-year-old Azam has been in jail since November 2025. Earlier, he had been imprisoned twice, once for 27 months and later for 23 months.
Akhilesh has met him only once during his jail stints — in March 2024, just before the Lok Sabha elections.
Azam’s wife Tahzeen Fatima, a former SP Rajya Sabha member and MLA, has publicly accused the leadership of indifference towards her family although Azam has stood by Akhilesh and his father, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, since the SP’s foundation in 1992.
There have also been occasions when Akhilesh has been accused of ignoring Abdullah Azam, Azam Khan’s son and former SP MLA, at the party headquarters in Lucknow. Abdullah is also in jail on the charge of possessing two permanent account numbers.
Reacting to his uncle and SP general secretary Shivpal Yadav’s remark after meeting Azam in jail last month that he would be home minister of Uttar Pradesh if the party came to power in 2027, Akhilesh had said: “We will give him (Shivpal) a written note on what to say.”
Akash Saxena, the BJP MLA of Rampur, has filed the maximum number of cases against Azam Khan and his family members.
“There is a general perception that by targeting Azam Khan, the BJP wants to send a message of Hindu consolidation across Uttar Pradesh. As the Assembly elections approach, the Enforcement Directorate is also intensifying its inquiry into the money-laundering case (against Azam). But the Muslims are seeing through the plan. Such actions of central and state agencies, as well as the BJP’s escalating attacks on Azam Khan, will only help Akhilesh as he hopes this will unite the Muslims under the SP,” said a source close to Azam’s family.
The ED had interrogated Azam in jail two weeks ago.
Many Sunni clerics have in the recent weeks alleged that the SP has made the Muslims their “bonded voters” by scaring them in the name of the “anti-Muslim BJP.”
“The fact is that we don’t see any difference between the BJP and the SP. They both bank on hate politics of one or the other kind. The SP has misused Azam and the Muslims. The Muslims voters are at a juncture when they can even move to the BJP if Prime Minister Narendra Modi stops the party’s second line of leadership from making hateful remarks against the minority community,” said Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi, a Barelvi cleric.