Akhilesh Yadav under attack from all corners on rising crime

LUCKNOW: The recent spurt in cases of crime in UP has revived the talk of lawlessness during the Samajwadi Party government rule, which is now troubling Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Even as the Budaun rape and murder case refuses to die down, another rape case in the district has hit the headlines. BJP leaders, including three district-level leaders, have been killed in the last few days, which has given the opposition a chance to slam the Samajwadi Party government.

Most of the time it is the unruly SP cadre and ‘inefficient’ policing which has been the reason behind the increasing cases of crime.

Dalit author and Professor of GB Pant institute of Social Sciences, Badri Narayan says “Whenever the SP government comes to power their cadres tend to go out of hand. They feel that now nobody will touch them and that leads to absence of fear and law among them. The social base of SP believes that they can get away with anything once the SP is in power and either they start taking law in their hands of start sheltering lumpen elements."

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has done large-scale transfers and dissolved the state as well as district units of the SP in order to send out a strong message ever since the party faced a humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls.

With the involvement of cops in several cases of crime, the Akhilesh government has also transferred lower rung cops out of their native districts and even district neghbouring their homes.

In the Budaun case, apart from the three Yadav brothers, the involvement of two cops was also found in the rape and murder of the two minor girls.

“Politics in UP is castebased and whenever the two overt practitioners of this—the SP and BSP— come to power their support base feels empowered. The babudom is also divided on caste and party lines. When the bureaucrat or police officer gets his posting for being loyal to a party he tends to overlook cases where the ruling party’s cadre is involved in a crime" says Prof Sudhir Panwar.

So while Akhilesh has started sprucing up the bureaucracy and posting officers on merit, he needs to take steps to discipline the cadres for a long term solution.