It was in the summer of 2003 that the Samajwadi Party hit the headlines for actually supporting rape and murder when Mulayam Singh Yadav gave a statement saying that he had taken Amar Mani Tripathi into his party because the latter had “saved the country and the state”.
Amar Mani Tripathi, a former minister booked for the rape and murder of Lucknow poetess Madhumita Shukla, had defected to the SP when Mayawati pulled out of the BJP coalition.
Mulayam defended his decision with “Amar Mani ne desh bachaya, pradesh bachaya (Amar Mani had saved the country and the state)”
Eleven years later, Amar Mani, now serving a life sentence for his crime, continues to enjoy Samajwadi patronage and his “legacy” in the underworld is now a part of the party’s culture.
The SP first became synonymous with “goonda raj” in 1995 when the now famous state guesthouse incident took place. Mayawati, then a fledgling BSP leader, had come down from Delhi to hold a meeting with her party leaders as the first SP-BSP government was cracking up and Kanshi Ram had sent her as his emissary.
Even as the meeting was on in the state guesthouse, Samajwadi men stormed the guesthouse and began pulling BSP MLAs out of the meeting. Mayawati and the remaining MLAs locked themselves into one of the rooms and stayed there for the next 30 hours. The Samajwadis turned off electric and water supply and stayed outside the room, hurling abuses and kicking at the door. Thirty hours later, the Mulayam Singh government was dismissed and Mayawati and her men were “rescued” from the guesthouse. She later became chief minister with BJP support.
Another major factor that encourages lawlessness ion the Samajwadi regimes is the party’s thrust on youth power and campus politics — both of which thrive on violence in Uttar Pradesh.
The ascent of Akhilesh Yadav to the party’s top echelons of the Samajwadi further attracted youth power that seems to have gone completely berserk after the formation of the government.
The fact that the Akhilesh government is in no mood to act against the offenders — most of whom apparently belong to the party’s “votebank” — has been steadily encouraging lawlessness.
It happened in Muzaffarnagar last year and now in Badaun. It has happened in Ferozabad, in Mainpuri and in Azamgarh and is gradually spreading to other parts of the state as well.
The Muzaffarnagar riots was so badly handled by the government that it created a seemingly permanent divide between Hindus and Muslims and the polarisation was so strong that SP’s Yadavs also turned into Hindus for a change.
The SP was swept off its feet in the Lok Sabha elections and is still groping for a foothold.
In Badaun, the double rape and murder case now threatens to turn into a full blown caste war.
Policing in UP has gone for a complete toss. Explaining about the situation in the state, a senior official says, “Crime control is completely out of question when you are expected to first identify a criminal by his caste and then decided on the action. If the police had been allowed to handle the Muzaffarnagar riots firmly — without discriminating on caste lines — the situation would have been controlled in a matter of hours.”
Women, interestingly, have been at the receiving end in all Samajwadi regimes. The SP keeps women on the periphery and does not allow women to be a part of the decision-making body. While many blame chief minister Akhilesh Yadav for the plummeting law and order situation in UP, the fact remains the situation is completely out of his control.
His directives to party workers are not being heeded, the elders in the party do not wish to help him improve the situation and the bureaucracy and the police force now prefer to watch from the wings. The perplexed chief minister is now exercising his most convenient option which is blaming the media for all ills.
Clearly, the summer of discontent in Uttar Pradesh is preparing to turn into an autumn of dissent and if that happens winter may not be very far off for Akhilesh Yadav — the “Tipu” who was crowned Sultan in 2012.
