The Rampur Development Authority has served a notice on Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, founded by Samajwadi Party veteran Azam Khan who is also its lifetime chancellor, stating that it has constructed 38 structures without formal approval.
The RDA, an urban planning body, has sought a reply within 15 days. Khan, a former Rampur MP who founded the Samajwadi Party along with Mulayam Singh Yadav, is in jail on the charge of faking documents to get two PAN numbers for his son.
Khan, a key minority leader in Uttar Pradesh, is also facing a case of alleged land grab for the university.
Sources said the university had received a similar notice against its medical college and administrative block three years ago. Tazeen Fatma, secretary of the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust that manages the university, had replied that the local zilla panchayat had approved those constructions on June 16, 2016. Fatma is Khan’s wife and a former Rajya Sabha member.
The fire department has also started a probe against Mohammad Ali Jauhar University.
V.K. Singh, the chief fire officer of Rampur, said on Tuesday that the June 22 blaze at a Lucknow building that housed a coaching institute had prompted the government to scrutinise all coaching and academic institutions for adherence to fire-safety norms. “We are inspecting Jauhar University also,” he said.
Seventeen people, most of them students, had died in the Lucknow blaze.
The fire department had in a report in 2022 said Mohammad Ali Jauhar University didn’t follow fire safety rules.
The university offers courses in medical sciences, engineering, science and the arts. Over 3,000 students are enrolled there.
In Rampur on Tuesday, chief minister Yogi Adityanath announced 101 projects worth ₹777 crore for the Milak and Bilaspur Assembly constituencies.
He said in a public meeting: “There was a time when the properties of the poor were captured. The SP government (2012-2017) suppressed the voices of the Dalits and the poor here. The autocratic SP government was overthrown by the people and now Rampur is on the path of development.”
“The SP government grabbed the land of poor people, but the BJP dispensation ensured justice to the people after 2017 (when Adityanath became chief minister),” he said.
Reacting to the illegal construction notice, an acquaintance of Khan said in Lucknow on condition of anonymity: “The way SP leaders remained silent on the atrocities against Azam Khan, who was arrested along with his entire family, released and then again arrested, makes us believe that Mulayam Singh Yadav sacrificed him in his lifetime and allowed the BJP government to do anything with him. In return, the BJP government spared Mulayam’s family members, who were also named in several scams during SP rule.”
