A day after the Mayawati government increased the reward on Samajwadi Party MLA Vijay Mishra an accused in the bomb attack on state Cabinet minister Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi from Rs 15,000 to Rs 2.5 lakh,party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said there was a serious threat to the legislators life from two ministers. Two ministers in the Mayawati government want Mishra killed. We fear that he has either been killed or will be killed, Yadav told mediapersons on Tuesday. He added that for several months now,people are not aware of Mishras whereabouts and no one in the party has been able to contact him. The state government and Chief Minister Mayawati would be responsible if anything happened to the MLA,said Yadav. Mishra is a second-term MLA from Gyanpur seat in Sant Ravi Das Nagar district. The SP chief said that on July 9,party leader Ram Gopal Yadav had written to Mayawati,stating that Secondary Education Minister Rangnath Mishra and Higher Education Minister Rakeshdhar Tripathi wanted to get Mishra eliminated because of political rivalry. On July 24,Leader of Opposition Shivpal Singh Yadav and state SP president Akhilesh Yadav wrote separate letters to the Speaker and the Governor,informing them about their apprehension. Yadav alleged that the DGP also disliked Mishra and that he had been falsely implicated in dozens of cases. Nandi personally did not want to name Mishra in the case,he claimed. It is surprising that the Uttar Pradesh Police have announced a reward of Rs 2.5 lakh on Mishras head on trumped up charges, said Yadav. According to the police,Rajesh Pilot alias Anand Shandilya,who was arrested from Mumbai earlier this month,had named Mishra as one of the conspirators behind the attack in Allahabad on July 12. Eight persons,including Nandi and The Indian Express senior reporter Vijay Pratap Singh,were injured in the attack. A BSP worker and Vijay Pratap Singh later died.
