Mulayam Raj Redux: Akhilesh takes UP back to the future

Last week, Mulayam Singh returned to the national stage with a big bang after months of ceding the spotlight to his son. The presidential race drama was a one-man Mulayam show, with nary a glimpse of the supposed leader of the Samajwadi Party, Akhilesh Yadav. And it confirmed what many in UP already know: Mulayam raj is back! And that’s not good news. Four months into his first tenure as CM, Akhilesh Yadav looks increasingly like a paper tiger, a squeaky clean facade that masks the return of goonda politics as usual. The warning signs came early, at the announcement of the new cabinet in March which included the infamous Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya. The well-known thug accused in eight cases of attempt to murder, kidnapping and abduction was put in charge of the prisons department, no less, and awarded the lucrative food and civil supplies portfolio. “But a man who has ruled the state thrice can’t really be expected to refrain from some backseat driving when his son debuted on the gaddi. So it was no surprise that, when Akhilesh was sworn in with 47 ministers, the roster read like a Mulayam wishlist,” noted an Outlook magazine story titled Papa Kehte Hain. The chosen list of Mulayam buddies was predictably suspect: “According to a study by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), at least five of the newly inducted ministers face murder charges, nine stand accused of attempt to murder, half a dozen others are involved in cases of kidnapping, extortion, dacoity or assault. Two ministers face rape charges.” Netaji did not just cherrypick the cabinet, but also the top bureaucrats, senior police officers and the Lok Ayukta – who are key to facilitating the kind of bad governance he is best known for. [caption id=“attachment_348705” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Akhilesh has a Manmohan Singh problem. Reuters”]  [/caption] It’s hardly a surprise then that the state today looks much like the UP of yore. A new Tehelka cover story, The Gangsters are Back, reveals the extent of its regression as it charts the renewed fortunes of its best known goondas. Author Ashish Khetan and his photographer confront gangster and SP politician Amarmani Tripathi, who is serving a life term for the murder of his ex-lover Madhumita Shukla. They catch him just as he leaves prison for his daily outing:

For the past three months, every afternoon, a police vehicle arrives at the prison to escort Tripathi, ostensibly to take him to BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, for some medical procedures. Tripathi’s private vehicles also reach the jail around the same time. Once out of the jail complex, Tripathi, instead of being ushered into the police truck with its spare interiors, climbs into his luxury vehicle. With the police truck behind them, the vehicle drives straight to the BRD Medical College where Tripathi parks himself in a private luxury room. For the next several hours, a durbar is held in this room, where a crowd of 100-150 people, comprising his followers and gang members, gather every day to meet the gangster. Tripathi takes petitions, makes phone calls, writes letters to officials, negotiates property deals, mediates in land disputes and holds meetings with his gang. Later in the evening, he drives back to prison to keep the façade of life imprisonment going.

Tripathi is just one among many eminent thugs enjoying the good life courtesy the Akhilesh Yadav government. The “notorious don” and Samajwadi Party MLA Abhay Singh is ruling the roost in Faizabad, even as the local police has filed a request to drop charges in one case. There are six others, but this is the only one in which the court has denied Singh bail. The same authorities are also helpfully filing charges against Singh’s rivals. Mafia boss Vijay Mishra’s prison term is also now in name only: “For the past two weeks, he has been staying in an air-conditioned private room in Balrampur Hospital, Lucknow.” As with him, the state has helpfully transferred a number of SP thugs to a prison in their home ground to help them reestablish their reign of terror. “Law and order is our priority and from today its our responsibility. Till now we have been levelling allegations on others”, Akhilesh told reporters  after taking oath as UP CM. Four months later, those words ring hollow. Asked about Tripathi’s VIP treatment, Minister of State for Prisons Iqbal Mahmood (who visited the Gorakhpur jail on the same day as Tehelka, no less) feigns outraged ignorance: “A conspiracy is afoot to malign our young chief minister. The enemies have realised that this young man is not going to be dethroned for at least the next 20 years. That’s why they are spreading canards.” Strident rhetoric does little to mask the facts: 800 murders, 270 rapes, 256 kidnappings and 720 cases of loot in two months. “These are not isolated cases. The news of the criminal activities of SP workers from the districts is not even reaching Lucknow. The way the party’s workers, MLAs and even ministers are taking law into their hands indicates that Akhilesh is helpless,” says BJP spokesperson Vijay Bahadur Pathak. Akhilesh has a Manmohan Singh problem: he is seen as a clean man with good intentions and very little power. A man whose government runs to another’s dictates. The chief minister may be weak and ineffectual, but is he also not innocent. When the goonda-gardi occurs in the context of his wife’s Lok Sabha election, the protestations of helplessness start to ring hollow. An Open magazine story reveals the secret behind Dimple Yadav’s “dubious electoral marvel”: “the abduction of people trying to file nominations and the brazen use of force by UP’s ruling party to keep the fray free of other candidates.” “In front of the returning officer’s office, representatives of Dimple Yadav thrashed me brutally and shoved me into a Scorpio. I was held at gunpoint in a hotel room at Kannauj until the nomination deadline was over,” Prabhat Kumar Pandey of the small Voter’s Party tells Open. Why such overkill? Because Dimple lost the Ferozabad byelection to actor Raj Babbar, and her husband was determined not to let history repeat itself – in Kannauj. “Our first priority is to help Akhilesh settle down,” confessed Mulayam, when asked about his political U-turn on the presidential race. But herein lies the irony: a Mulayam raj redux virtually guarantees Mayawati’s return to electoral glory. In leading UP back to the future, Akhilesh Yadav may well find himself exactly where his father started.