LUCKNOW, June 1: Union home minister Indrajit Gupta's letter to the Uttar Pradesh Government, which reached here by speed post two days ago, has come as a slap in the face of the Mayawati regime. Gupta has demanded to know why only Samajwadi Party leaders with criminal records were being arrested while partymen facing similar charges in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Bahujan Samaj Party were roaming scot-free.So far, the Chief Minister has been claiming in public speeches that she had inducted persons with ``shady past'' in the BSP only to counter the SP's stock. However, perhaps realising the lameness of this reasoning, Mayawati has now been burning the midnight oil to find a plausible and satisfactory answer to Gupta's query.The Home Minister has based his note on a 29-page letter sent to it by the SP, which contained names of 29 BSP and BJP leaders allegedly having ``a long criminal history''. The SP letter also mentioned names of its own party members who had been arrested or were being prosecuted against by the Uttar Pradesh Government under various Acts.Initially, Mayawati had countered SP leader Mulayam Singh Yadav's move by dispatching alleged criminal records of all SP leaders arrested under the National Security Act (NSA), the Anti-Gangsters Act and the Anti-Goonda Act. No innocent person had been victimised and Mulayam was just waging a political war, the Chief Minister had claimed.Mayawati had attached ``figures'' to back this up. She claimed to have arrested 537 criminals under the NSA during the past two months, of whom only 27 belonged to the SP as per Mulayam's own list. Similarly, she had pointed out, of the 3,124 criminals arrested under the Anti-Gangsters Act, only 80 belonged to the SP; and of the over 3,500 arrested under the Anti-Goonda Act, the number of SP members was only 95.However, the Chief Minister might be hard put to explain why only SP members with criminal records are being acted against and not those in the BJP and BSP.Those BJP leaders listed as ``criminals'' in Gupta's letter are Dharam Dutt, Tripal Singh Dhama, Ram Sewak Singh, Upadesh Singh, Badshah Singh, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Prakash Narain Tripathi, Sushil Chauhan and Pappu Rana. In case of some of them, like Upadesh Singh, the BJP has argued that they had just recently defected from the SP and the latter had no right to point fingers at them now.The BSP leaders with alleged criminal records figuring in Gupta's list are Nafis Ansari, Brahma Singh, Hari Prasad Kharwar, Vinod Singh Nate, J.N. Rai, Ram Prasad Chaudhury, Sattar, Nasim, Narendra Bahadur Singh, Raghunath Singh Varma, Vachspati Mishra, Rizvan Zahir, Rakesh Yadav, Ashok Dixit, Akbar Ali, Dhuram Chaudhury, Mukhtar Ansari and Fateh Bahadur Rawat.The list of 23 SP leaders with ``criminal records'' released by the BSP include Chandrapal Singh, Munna Rai, Hashim, Sunil Rai, Arun Shankar Anna, Umakant Yadav, Angad Yadav, Vir Abhimanyu, Atiq Ahmad, Nandlal Yadav, Laltu Yadav, Abdul Latif, Shiv Pal Singh, Mahatama Yadav, Mahendra Yadav and Abdul Kalam.
