Mayawati’s drive fails to check crime rate in UP

LUCKNOW, Aug 4: Though the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had raised much hue and cry over the law and order...

LUCKNOW, Aug 4: Though the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had raised much hue and cry over the law and order situation in UP during the President’s Rule, the coalition’s own record isn’t much better in that direction. The State capital and neighbouring areas have alone seen 20 murders since May, with the police having failed to nab any of the killers.

The last such incident happened on Thursday. A railway contractor was killed, and three injured in a shootout at a busy crossing in Lucknow in broad daylight. The killers managed to escape. Among those hurt was a Shiv Sena leader from Gorakhpur.

To make it worse for the authorities, the murderers carried out the job with AK-47s. The State police had recently launched a drive to fish out all AK-series rifles in Lucknow.

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The matter has also made it to the State Assembly, with agitated opposition members virtually bringing the proceedings of the House to a halt on Friday and Saturday over the State’s deteriorating law and order situation.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Barkhu Ram Varma’s claim that Thursday’s killing was the result of personal animosity between two groups of railway contractors, failed to satisfy the Opposition benches. The contractor’s murder comes close on the heels of the daring fatal attack on a PWD engineer at Indira Nagar in Lucknow, and the shooting down of a cinema hall manager of the city. Though the police claim to have conducted raids at possible hideouts of the assailants, there is no trace of them as yet.

A worrying aspect is the use of sophisticated weapons in almost all of these murders, highlighting the suspicion that the State has become a transit point in smuggling of weapons.

Despite this, Chief Minister Mayawati has been claiming publicly that UP has become a much safer place since she took over the reins of the State on March 21.

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Congress Legislature Party leader Pramod Tiwari, questioned this claim in the Assembly. Pointing out that the Mayawati Government had launched a two-month drive to take action against criminal elements and claims to have put 58,000 of them behind bars, he wondered why crimes seem to be still rising in the State. “The Government,” he charged, “was concentrating on transfers of police officials instead of taking serious action against criminals.”

Tiwari pointed out that in Lucknow alone, three persons had been killed in the past fortnight, while the police have not been able to catch the assailants in any of the murder cases that had occurred during the past four months.

“The situation is explosive, yet the Government has not taken concrete action to arrest the spiralling crime graph,” he said.

The BJP, which had been at the forefront in criticising the law and order situation during the President’s rule, has been maintaining silence over the issue. Senior party leader Atal Behari Vajpayee even claimed recently that the situation in Uttar Pradesh had improved since Mayawati came to power.