Maharashtra: Samajwadi Party’s Abu Azmi suspended from Assembly session for remark about Aurangzeb

Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Asim Azmi was suspended from the Maharashtra Assembly session on Wednesday for remarks he made about Mughal emperor Aurangzeb two days earlier, The Times of India reported.

Maharashtra Parliamentary Affairs Minister Chandrakant Patil moved the resolution for Azmi to be suspended, claiming that his comments were an insult to Chhatrapati Sambhaji and disrespected the House, The Indian Express reported.

Azmi was suspended for the remainder of the Assembly’s Budget Session that will conclude on March 26. The session started on Monday.

On Monday, Azmi said that he did not consider Aurangzeb to be a cruel ruler.

“Wrong history is being shown,” the Mankhurd Shivaji Nagar MLA told reporters. “Aurangzeb built many temples. I do not consider him a cruel ruler.”

This sparked a controversy, prompting Azmi to retract his statement on Tuesday. The chief of the Samajwadi Party’s Maharashtra unit said he had not intended to insult anyone.

“When I quoted a historian’s book about Aurangzeb, I never spoke ill of any of our great men,” he said on social media. “But if my statements, which have been distorted, have offended anyone, I take them back. The Assembly has important work to do and it should not be disrupted over this issue.”

He also said that his initial statement was in response to Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma drawing a...

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