Adityanath appears to have learned from his predecessors Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav, who slipped on law and order when they were at the helm and paid the price by losing power.
BJP rode to power in 2017 attacking the Akhilesh Yadav regime for being soft on crime and terrorism after Yadav’s promise to be different by ensuring strongman DP Yadav did not get a ticket in the 2012 polls and by cancelling the ticket of Ateeq Ahmed in 2017. BJP termed the Yadav regime “jungle raj” owing to the Muzaffarnagar communal riots, a move to withdraw cases in the UP court blasts and killing of deputy superintendent of police Zia-Ul-Haq in Raja Bhaiya’s Kunda.
Poetess Madhumita Shukla’s murder in 2003 had rocked the then BSP government after CM Mayawati treated her minister Amarmani Tripathi with kid gloves till he was arrested by the CBI.
Mulayam’s backing of Tripathi after becoming CM in 2003 and support to the likes of Mukhtar Ansari and Raghuraj Pratap Singh saw him bow out to Mayawati in 2007, who forged a Dalit-Brahmin formula against the “Yadav goonda raj” under the Samajwadi Party regime and promised a new order.
Mayawati’s regime saw a crackdown but the murders of chief medical officers that led to the National Rural Health Mission and other corruption scandals saw her lose power in 2012.
Within a month of coming to power, Adityanath made his policy clear — criminals must surrender or meet their end. The police operations started in August 2017, said a senior police officer who has been at the centre of action.
The CM’s unequivocal approach notwithstanding, UP’s inherent police-criminal nexus led to some setbacks. The Bikru massacre of eight policemen, the killings of tribals in Sonbhadra, MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar case and the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests threatened to push Adityanath on the back foot.
The SP, BSP and the Congress have all chosen to make law and order their main plank against Adityanath, underlining the political resonance the issue has in UP. However, BJP is quick to deflect the criticism to the administrative machinery in order to protect the CM’s image.
“In the Akhilesh regime, whenever a major crime happened, it was juxtaposed with our CM’s picture by the media. But the present CM seems immune from such criticism by the media,” said a senior SP leader, who did not wish to be identified.