Will poor law and order be Akhilesh's nemesis in UP?

Dateline

When Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav asked his party leaders, including legislators and ministers, not to take law into their hands and indulge in land grabbing lest they would be taught a lesson by the people in the forthcoming Assembly elections, he was only giving vent to his feelings about the prevailing law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh.

More than four years into his rule, poor law and order continued to haunt Akhilesh and not only political analysts but many in his own party believed that it could prove to be his undoing in the next Assembly elections, due Apr-May next year.

The youngest chief minister of India’s largest state had promised while taking over in 2012 that his would be a government that delivered on every front, especially law and order.

Ironically Akhilesh, who had been flaunting his achievements in many other fields, has incurred the wrath not only of his political rivals but also of the social activists over his failure on the law and order front.

The chief minister also acknowledged on many occasions that his government’s achievements had been overshadowed by poor law and order. It was recurring communal riots, including the one in Muzaffarnagar that claimed more than 60 lives and left thousands others displaced, during the early years of his regime.

The rising incidence of rapes, including the recent horrific gang-rape of a minor and her mother on a busy highway in Bulandshahar district, bloody clashes at Mathura, attacks on Dalits, public lynching of a Muslim at Dadri and ‘’mass exodus’’ of the Hindu families from Kairana, marred the later years.

More than 30 people, including two senior cops, were killed in clashes between armed members of a cult and police at a park in Mathura a few months back. Reports that the cult chief Ram Vriksha Yadav enjoyed political patronage and was allowed to occupy the public park for several years only enforced the popular perception that Samajwadi Party leaders had scant regard for the law.

“It is not that Akhilesh has not undertaken developmental works…he did try to rid his party of the goonda tag but could not do so as he did not receive support from his party leaders’’, says political analyst J P Shukla. Akhilesh’s arch rival BJP has made it amply clear that it would make Mathura violence and the “mass exodus of Hindu families” from Kairana its major plank in the forthcoming Assembly elections.

The Uttar Pradesh government may think that Mathura is not an issue......but for us it is very important....we will make it an issue in the polls and expose the state government before the people, BJP national president Amit Shah said at a meeting recently.

Incidentally, Shah also linked the Mathura violence with land grabbing in the state by SP leaders and added that his party would also make “land grabbing” an election issue. The BJP has also set up a helpline number to enable the people to inform it about land grabbing and the party has claimed that it has so far received more than 2,000 complaints.

 Last year’s public lynching of a Muslim man Ikhlaq came as a big blot on the state government. The lynching shocked not only the country but it also reverberated on the foreign soil. The recent gang-rape of a 14-year old girl and her mother on a highway in Bulandshahar district by armed bandits too triggered a massive nationwide outrage and gave the opposition parties the stick to beat Akhilesh government with.

The revelations that the local police had let off one of the main accused Raees after his name had cropped in some road hold ups-and robberies and had not responded to the frenetic calls of the gang-rape victims only helped erode the faith and trust of the people in the ‘’iqbal’’ (authority) of the present dispensation, according to analysts here.

It was the poor law and order situation that prompted the state Governor Ram Naik to send a special report to President Pranab Mukherjee about the Mathura violence, mass exodus of Hindu families from Kairana and last year’s public lynching of a Muslim at Dadri.

Naik has criticised the state government for its handling of Mathura violence, Kairana exodus and Dadri lynching and made it clear that he would be sending a report to the President on these incidents. In fact, Naik’s criticism of the law and order situation in the state has created a rift between him and the state government.

Assessment of rivals

SP leaders, though do not agree to the assessment of the rivals about the law and order situation, do admit that there was such a perception. ‘’We have not been able to remove the negative perception in the minds of the people about law and order’’, remarked a senior SP leader.

The party’s rivals think otherwise. ‘’The people of Uttar Pradesh have been living under jungle raj for the past over four years…. they will reply through the ballot next year’’, says BJP leader Vijay Bahadur Pathak. Newly appointed state Congress president Raj Babbar also echoed similar sentiment and contests Akhilesh’s claim on development.

‘“Uttar Pradesh has slipped behind other states in the country in terms of development’’, Babbar said. Political observers feel that Akhilesh needed to act against his own party leaders if he wanted to improve the situation though they also say that time was running out. “The polls are barely a few months away…there is not enough time left for Akhilesh’’, says Shukla. Has the chief minister missed the bus? The analysts feel so. ‘’Poor law and order may prove to be his (Akhilesh) nemesis’’, he adds.