Clean the political scape

There was a time, when he first came to power, that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav used to defend his association with criminals, arguing that like his one-time political mentor Jayaprakash Narain, his aim was to reform them.

There was a time, when he first came to power, that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav used to defend his association with criminals, arguing that like his one-time political mentor Jayaprakash Narain, his aim was to reform them. The project does not seem to have worked too well. Not only has crime become rampant in the state, its politics, too, have become criminalised. A sting by a TV channel has shown up three MLAs, one each from the BJP, the SP and the BSP, willing to commit serious crimes, including drug trafficking and hawala money transfers, for a consideration. Mr Yadav, for one, insists that it is the chief minister's prerogative to choose his own ministers and has refused to act against his Minister for Backward Classes, Mehboob Ali, who faces the most serious charge. But surely propriety, if not common sense, would demand that he select people who uphold the law. As it is, this episode comes in the wake of the re-induction of Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya into the UP cabinet as minister for food and civil supplies. This is a person who is out on bail on a Pota case.

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All this is not surprising considering that the SP counts among its supporters independent MLAs like Mukhtar Ansari, Raja Bhaiyya and other lesser criminal dons. Ansari's brother, Afzal, a Samajwadi Party MP, is currently in jail, accused of the murder of a BJP MLA, Krishnand Rai. It now appears that the UP assembly will constitute a committee to look into the charges. Yet, Mr Yadav's attitude seems to suggest that all this is water off a duck's back. All that matters is that he should remain in power.

Criminalisation of politics is really about the amount of violence prevalent in our electoral processes. If this can be checked, perhaps the need for muscle power in elections, too, can be eliminated. While the Election Commission's sterling performance in Bihar has set a trend in clean elections, we still have to dump the detritus and skewed forms of social engineering on display for the past decade.