Jailed Uttar Pradesh MLAs attend offical lunch

Party time

The presence of two jailed UP legislators at the official lunch hosted by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in honour of the UPA Presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday would not have come to the public attention but for the media.

Police officials and the home department often looks the other way when legislators routinely violate prison manuals, making the mockery of the legal system.

So it was not a surprise when mafia don and Quami Ekta Dal MLA Mukhtar Ansari, currently lodged in Agra jail, and Samajwadi Party MLA Vijay Mishra, a history-sheeter who is behind the bars for an attempted murder, turned up at the Chief Minister’s official residence and enjoyed the lavish lunch with Mukherjee and other state officials.
Following the time-honoured tradition amongst jailed politicians, Ansari and Mishra have been in hospital for the past several days.

Ansari once stayed in a railway waiting room when taken for a court hearing outside
Agra, and hospital officials make no secret of what a headache Mishra has been.
“Hundreds of people visit him every day causing a lot of problems to the other patients,” said a Civil Hospital employee here about Mishra’s sojourns at the hospital.

MLAs and ministers feign illness and stretch the rules as much as they can during their stay at prison, allegedly with the connivance of the cops and jail authorities.
Examples of violations committed by imprisoned party leaders shows Mishra and Ansari are not alone.

Former minister and SP leader Amar Mani Tripathi, convicted in the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla, was recently in the news when the cops accompanying took him to a hotel after a court appearance.

Tripathi also spent several days at the hospital feigning illness. Doctors at the super speciality Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) could not determine the illness of former UP minister Jamuna Prasad Nishad, who was sent to prison for killing a cop but spent much of his time at the hospital. The UP government has sought a report from authorities concerned on how Mishra and Ansari managed to attend the official lunch, while they were only allowed to attend house sessions as MLAs.
Jailed legislators are brought to the house each morning to attend the session and are taken back to the prison at the end of the day.