The UP minister who flexes muscle ‘for the people’

He had flexed his muscle to prevent shops from being razed,too,again on behalf the people,he says. That was recently,when he took on the Gonda district administration during an anti-encroachment drive in Gonda city. Traders had told me their shops were being razed. I had to stand up for them, says Pandit,who greets everyone with his hands folded.

The muscleman is also known as a survivor. In 1993,rivals shot him 19 times outside his home in Ballipur village. He was then treasurer in the Samjwadi Partys district unit. Mulayam Singh Yadav,then chief minister,dispatched a special helicopter to ferry him to Lucknow,where he was admitted to KGMC. After a series of surgeries over months,he returned home to a rousing welcome.

He survived the attack, says Brijbhushan Sharan Singh,a Samajwadi Party MP. The case is still going on. I am one of the accused.

There was a time when Pandit and Brijbhushan worked together. They were aides to Raja Anand Singh of Mankapur,who was then in the Congress he is now a Samajwadi Party minister and who wielded his control of Gonda through Pandit and Brijbhushan.

Pandit and Brijbhushan went their separate ways in the 1990s,after the Rajas influence began to wane. The bond sustained initially; Pandits elder brother Ravinder Singh was a partner in Brijbhushans business.

They fell out following the murder of Brijbhushans brother Pappu Singh in 1991,in a clash over a contract,during which an aide of Pandit too was killed. When the attempt on Pandits life was made two years later,people recall,it marked the first time anyone had used semi-automatic weapons in Gonda.

Ravinder,Pandits brother and Brijbhushans partner,was murdered later. Since then,Pandit has never left his two younger brothers,Narendra and Mahesh,unguarded.

The rivalry with Brijbhushan continues. Every year,Brijbhushan has been celebrating his birthday on a grand scale. For the past several years,so has Pandit Singh. Brijbhushans birthday is on January 8. Pandit throws his party on January 7.

At his home in the sand fields on the banks of the Ghagra,people flock to him with trivial problems they want him to sort out. His aides,ready with cellphones,call up various officials as he gives them orders.

In September,he was upset about a programme at which the district magistrate would distribute sewing machines among people. The event was eventually postponed from September 25. When it was held a week later,it was Pandit who distributed the machines.

Pandit comes from a wealthy background; his father Kamal Raj Singh owned the largest wholesale foodgrain centre in Nawabganj. With his two surviving brothers,he began a business in which they soon grabbed lucrative government contracts.

SP minister Shiv Pratap Yadav,then district unit president,helped establish Pandit politically. Besides,he had Mulayams support. Through all his controversies,Mulayam has always stood by Pandit,who in turn has been loyal to him.

Pandit won his assembly seat in 1996,then in 2002,and was made minister of state for medical education in 2004. Pandit,who dropped out after clearing XII,runs a number of educational institutions inter colleges,degree colleges,a pharmacy college,an engineering college,a management college under the KRS group,named after his father. His Suraj Hotel is named after the son of his slain brother. The family also owns a petrol pump,a rice mill and the foodgrain business. In his election affidavit,Pandit had declared an annual income of Rs 11.76 lakh.

He adopted the name Pandit Singh to strike a chord with Brahmins,who dominate his constituency.

When he resigned on October 12,it was after he had been accused in the abduction of the district chief medical officer; the alleged motive was that his candidates for doctors on contract had not been selected. Though no police case was filed,the CMO had told reporters it was Pandit who had abducted him.

Three criminal cases are pending against Pandit. Flour mills owned by his brothers and nephew were raided by the CBI in 2011 in connection with the foodgrain scam.

Narendra,Maheshs wife and and their nephew are block pramukhs. Mahesh is the partys district unit treasurer.