Hema Malini goofed up but the blame for Mathura violence must lie with CM Akhilesh Yadav

Though there are notable exceptions, most movie pin-ups who join politics frequently mix up reel world with the real. On silver screen, everything goes in accord with the screenplay. Don’t like it? Scrap the script or force the director to make changes. In real life, however, there are no retakes. One could be hauled over coals for posting pictures of a movie shoot while violent shootouts break out in their constituency. Let’s face it, Hema Malini, the BJP MP from Mathura, has been incredibly callous. She was clueless about the tragedy which erupted on Thursday night and continued to remain so throughout the morning on Friday when she happily posted pictures from Mumbai’s Madh Islands on an upcoming film. In fact, even when she was apprised of the fatal clash, she initially seemed to have misread the enormity of the tragedy.

Hema Malini’s tweets on the movie (which she deleted later after facing flak) were deemed inappropriate and the entire fiasco left the actor-turned-politician looking careless, inconsiderate, insensitive and even tactless. While handling questions during the media conference later, she appeared hurt and indignant over people accusing her of being tactless. The BJP MP has looked out of depth and sorely lacking in realpolitik while handling the aftermath of a disaster. [caption id=“attachment_1685937” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. AFP[/caption] But here’s the thing. Is Hema Malini culpable for the cataclysmic tragedy that occurred at Jawahar Bagh in Mathura on Thursday night that left 24 people — including two senior police officers — dead and over 40 injured? If a Lok Sabha MP is held responsible for the implementation of law and order in a state, why on earth did people of Uttar Pradesh elect Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his entire troupe of Samajwadi Party MLAs? To hold annual mega bashes on party chief Mulayam Singh’s birthday? Hema Malini goofed up but making her the scapegoat — as Congress party and a section of the media has done — is a convenient and malicious step to divert attention from Akhilesh Yadav’s incompetence as an administrator and his government’s abject failure on multiple levels. If there is no complicity from the state government, how is it possible for a group of squatters to forcefully claim 300 acres of prime land in Jawahar Bagh as their own for more than two years and run what seems to have been a parallel administration? Reports say the land grabbers, who call themselves Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi and the Swadheen Bharat Subhas Sena (the latter might even be Satyagrahi’s militant arm) — an obscure band of violent madcaps — apparently transformed the vast green square into a “kingdom” with over 2,000 “residents”, a hospital, a school, streetlights with electricity back-up, kacha and pucca houses and had round-the-clock security with over a dozen chowkis keeping an eye on the area. They wanted their own currency and cheaper fuel. It seems as if in the middle of the bustling temple town, there is a rabbit hole which leads to this decidedly dodgy ‘wonderland’. How on earth could they have performed their stunt without the knowledge of the administration? Was the law and order machinery at Akhilesh Yadav’s command sleeping? Or does this case of willful slumber have something to do with vote bank politics? The opposition, while demanding the resignation of the SP government, has alleged that the fringe group enjoyed Akhilesh government’s sponsorship. “Illegal encroachment at Jawahar Bagh proves that the encroachers had been given high-level government patronage and it is an example of jungle raj in the state. The discovery of huge cache of firearms and ammunition proves that the ruling party was patronising criminals to use them during the upcoming UP Assembly polls,” BSP chief Mayawati was quoted, as saying . State BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya blamed Chief Minister’s uncle Shivpal Yadav , a minister in Akhilesh’s cabinet, for backing the cult which is dominated by Yadavs. Leaving aside the political charges and counter-charges, it is inexplicable why the state administration waited for two years for the Allahabad High Court to order an evacuation of the land grabbers. And when ultimately forced by the court (which was acting on a PIL) to do so, why did the police appear unprepared when they went in to launch the eviction drive? Does it not point to a massive intelligence failure that, as this Firstpost report points out, the cops had no input about the presence of firearms such as guns, pistols, rifles, and ammunition, swords, knives, bombs and even hand grenades within the park premises? The police, which started the anti-encroachment operation with a small team, has admitted that the scale of the resistance took them by surprise and that they didn’t know protesters were “so heavily armed”. If that is indeed the case, whose failure is it? Akhilesh Yadav has since blamed it on his police force , saying: “There were some lapses. Police should have gone with full preparation and after holding talks, but there was no information that they would be having so much arms and ammunition.” The UP CM must know that the final blame for this tragic incident which resulted in loss of so many lives, lies with him.