In the Uttar Pradesh (UP) assembly just after the polls of 2002, of the 403 members, there were 206 people with criminal charges against them, across all parties.
"Had these people with criminal records joined hands, they could very well have formed the government,” says former Director General of Police I.C. Dwivedi.
The 2007 assembly elections did not change the situation much, though the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP), which came to power, assured an end to this state of criminalisation of politics. It also had an opportunity to do so, because for the first time since 1991, one party could come to power on its own. Unstable coalitions enabled criminals to ingratiate themselves with the political class and secure a niche in governance.
But seeing the way in which UP Minister for Institutional Finance Nand Gopal Gupta and three others were targeted through a remote-controlled device in Allahabad on Monday, there is little reason for optimism.
Hoist with its own petard?
It should be said to the credit of the present government that it did begin to act on its promise. By getting her party MP Umakant Yadav, accused of property grabbing, arrested within 17 days of taking charge, Chief Minister Mayawati tried to be as good as her word that in her government crime and criminals would not stand a chance.
There is a long way to be covered. Last week a seizure of arms smuggled into west UP districts and detonators in eastern UP areas ahead of the panchayat polls in September has compounded the problems of the police.
"It's quite a task. The panchayat polls will be followed by the civic polls in February 2011 and the 2012 assembly elections. The remote-triggered blast technique — hitherto used by terror groups and Maoists — has thrown a fresh challenge," a police official says.
There have been several allegations of the ruling party's nexus with criminals. In 2008, the then minister of state for food and civil supplies, Anand Sen, was arrested in connection with a murder case and soon after another BSP minister of state for fisheries, Jamuna Nishad, was sent to jail for opening fire inside a police station.
{{/usCountry}}There have been several allegations of the ruling party's nexus with criminals. In 2008, the then minister of state for food and civil supplies, Anand Sen, was arrested in connection with a murder case and soon after another BSP minister of state for fisheries, Jamuna Nishad, was sent to jail for opening fire inside a police station.
{{/usCountry}}In June 2008, Bhagwan Singh, BSP MLA from Bulandshahr, was arrested on a criminal charge, and five months later another ruling party MLA, Shekhar Tiwari, was nabbed for his alleged involvement in the murder of an engineer.
"As a series of ruling party members started getting embroiled in criminal cases, the Mayawati government's claim of bhaymukt samaj (fearless society) started ringing hollow," said S.K. Dwivedi, head of political science, Lucknow University.
Little change
Film legend Amitabh Bachchan, UP's brand ambassador under the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party regime, did not sound convincing when he said before the assembly election of 2007: "UP mein dum hai kyunki jurm yahan kum hai (UP has the potential as crime is less [than in other places])."
The crime situation in UP had deteriorated sharply during the Samajwadi Party (SP) rule from 2003 to 2007.
Raghuraj Prasad Singh, a man in and out of jail, was a minister in Mulayam Singh Yadav's government. So was Haji Yaqoob, who publicly announced a bounty of Rs 51 crore on the head of the Danish cartoonist who had made an illustration of Prophet Mohammed.
UP BJP President Surya Pratap Shahi says: "If Mulayam Singh had hailed his party MLA Amarmani Tripathi, convicted of murder, as the savior of democracy after Tripathi and a few others helped him form the government in 2003, Mayawati described mafia-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari as the messiah of the poor during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls. With such leaders, how can the crime situation improve in UP?"
The cleansing?
Mayawati has since ordered that all persons with criminal antecedents would be removed from the BSP.
Mukhtar Ansari, who had offered "unconditional support" to the BSP in 2007and fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections on the party's ticket from Varanasi, has been expelled. To improve policing in the state, the UP government even replaced Vikram Singh (once a trusted lieutenant of Mayawati) by Karamvir Singh as director-general of police in September last. Still, the overall crime scenario continues to be bleak.
The opposition is now training its guns on the government, dubbing the "purge" a farce. "I would sum up the BSP rule in a single line: Gundey chadh gaye haathi par, goli marein chaati par (all criminals are with the BSP and, thus, having a free run in UP)," says BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who till recently was the party functionary in charge of the state.
In west UP, there has been spurt in robberies. In 2007, 19 cases of robbery were registered in Ghaziabad, while in 2008, the figure was 16. This year it is already 214!
However, now that Mayawati is not dependent on any political crutch, she may try to deal with organised crime with an iron hand. The consensus is: "Only she can do it."
That would give her a political handle to take on her political adversaries.