In 1987 when Narendra Modi, then a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak, took up a political role as general secretary (organisation) of the Gujarat unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, his first and immediate test was the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation election. Ahmedabad in those days was volatile with a string of riots rocking the city in 1985-86, with an anti-reservation agitation taking a communal colour. The period also saw the emergence of a powerful Muslim underworld under the leadership of a gangster called Abdul Latif who was seen to enjoy the patronage of the Congress, as Ajay Singh describes in his well-researched book The Architect of the New BJP: How Narendra Modi Transformed the Party.
Apart from the innovative strategies Modi adopted in that election, what helped his cause was the fact that jailed don, Abdul Latif — “who saw himself as a sort of Robin Hood for the minorities” — decided to contest the election from five wards as an independent candidate. His election symbol was a lion. His henchmen paraded a caged lion during the campaign. “With the scars of the recent violence still afresh, this innovative campaign was an attempt to exploit polarisation. However, it played in favour of the BJP, which promised to dispel the atmosphere of fear and insecurity among the people of Ahmedabad,” writes Ajay Singh.
When the results were declared, the BJP got a majority in the corporation, winning 67 of the 127 seats. Latif won from all five wards but had to surrender four. As per the rules then, the runners-up were elected and the BJP ended up with three more seats. That AMC victory laid the foundation for the BJP’s rise to power in Gujarat. It was part of the government three years later.
Yogi Adityanath was barely 15 then. One doesn’t know if Ahmedabad municipal election and the don’s role in it ever drew his attention. Three decades later, in 2017, when Yogi took over as the UP chief minister, Latif’s life was playing out in the public domain through a Bollywood movie—Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Raees.
The caged lion in the AMC polls has resurfaced in different names in UP’s political discourse. The latest is Atiq Ahmed, the gangster-cum-politician who was assassinated by three people in Prayagraj on Saturday, preceded by the killing of his son, Asad, in a police encounter two days ago.
Incidentally, in 1995-97, Abdul Latif was also lodged in Sabarmati jail from where Atiq Ahmed was brought to Prayagraj. Latif was killed in a police encounter in 1997 when he was trying to escape. Just as Latif as a caged lion gave a boost to the BJP in Ahmedabad civic polls in 1987, many jailed and on-the-run and prone-to-encounter gangsters are shaping up Yogi Adityanath’s politics and governance in UP today.
Yogi’s ‘thok do’ methods
Since Yogi Adityanath took over in 2017, more than 10,000 police encounters have taken place in which 178 criminals were gunned down, The Times of India reported last month.
His detractors may have a lot of questions about these killings— the seeming non-reaction of policemen when Atiq was being fired at, the urgency for his late evening medical examination, the reason for leaving the vehicle at the hospital entrance, allowing him to address the media there, so on and so forth. Many other questions are being raised about Asad’s encounter killing. Conspiracy theories abound.
Yogi Adityanath may not be losing sleep over this though. He knows how the criminal justice system works. Not a single policeman was convicted in Ishrat Jahan and Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter cases. In the Disha rape and murder case in Hyderabad in 2019, a commission of inquiry indicted 10 policemen for the killing of four accused in an encounter and recommended that they should be booked for murder. No action has been taken against the policemen yet. In the Vikas Dubey encounter case, a judicial commission gave a clean chit to the police.
Yogi Adityanath also knows how the opposition parties work. Look at the guarded reactions of opposition leaders to Atiq and his son’s killings. “Law is supreme. Criminals should be given the harshest punishment but it should be as per the country’s law. It’s not good for our democracy to play with the rule of law or judicial process for political objectives,” tweeted Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge echoed the same sentiments, saying that playing with law and order only creates “anarchy”.
“If someone can be killed in police cordon, what about the safety of common people….It seems some people are creating an atmosphere of fear deliberately,” tweeted Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. After Asad’s killing, Yadav tweeted that “through fake encounters, the government is trying to divert attention from real issues.”
None of these opposition leaders named Atiq or Asad Ahmed or raised any specific questions about the killings. They were largely didactic and philosophical, leaving the people to make intelligent guesses and come to their own conclusions. Most other opposition leaders reacted in the same vein. Rahul Gandhi chose to retweet Priyanka’s tweet.
Yogi Adityanath must be grinning from ear to ear to see his political adversaries going through the rigmarole. None of them cared to visit the spots or meet or talk to the families of the deceased.
When it comes to mafioso and gangsters-cum-politicians, there are so many skeletons in the opposition’s cupboards, too. Akhilesh always had reservations against Atiq Ahmed’s association with the SP but his father, the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, didn’t mind giving him party tickets for Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
Akhilesh had stalled the induction of DP Yadav, another Baahubali, into the SP in 2012 although he had to give in to his father’s wish when it came to inducting Raja Bhaiya or Raghuraj Pratap Singh in his Cabinet. An MP-MLA court of Ghazipur will award punishment to another don, five-term MLA Mukhtar Ansari who was associated with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on 29 April. That will give the BJP another reason to cheer Yogi on—“jo kahte hain who karte hain” (he does what he says). A reference to his remark that he made in the assembly last month: “Iss mafia ko mitti me mila denge.”
Yogi’s selective anti-mafia action?
A day after Asad Ahmed’s killing, SP media cell released a list of alleged criminals who are still “alive, committing crimes and running syndicates”. This list included Brijesh Singh who was released on bail last year, Raja Bhaiya, Dhananjay Singh, Brijbhushan Singh and Kuldeep Singh Sengar, among others.
“Are they special to Yogi ji? Actually, they belong to the same caste as that of Yogi. Therefore, they are free to commit crime…,” said the SP, taking a jibe at the chief minister.
Officials in the Yogi government countered these claims when I asked them during my visit to Lucknow recently about only Muslim gangsters being targeted. In response, officials shared a list according to which there were 66 “identified mafia/criminals” in UP. Out of these, 11 were Muslims, including Atiq Ahmed. Officials gave the instance of Sudhir Singh, a gangster from Yogi’s home turf of Gorakhpur—the police had arrested him in 2021 and also attached properties worth crores of rupees. Police encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey was also cited by them. Dubey was a Brahmin though.
Official claims of impartiality aside, Yogi Adityanath is facing severe flak for his trigger-happy cops. “In a society where murderers are celebrated, what’s the use of a criminal justice system?” asked All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) head Asaduddin Owaisi in a scathing attack on the UP CM. He voiced the concerns of the entire opposition, the Left and Liberal intelligentsia. Incidentally, the Central leadership of the BJP has been rather quiet about the killings of Atiq, his son and their associates. Their silence sounds strange as top party leaders including Amit Shah were heaping praise on Yogi Adityanath for “finishing” mafia in UP only last year.
Yogi’s voters, however, seem to have a different take. They don’t seem to share the opposition’s concerns about the rule of law and the criminal justice system. I spent Sunday calling up my friends and acquaintances in UP to elicit their views about the encounter killing and assassination. Achha hua or good riddance was a common refrain. And this—his image as another strong leader with a 56-inch chest—is all Yogi may care about. As James Madison said, “All governments rest on opinion.” Mind you, it’s a post-truth era.
DK Singh is Political Editor at ThePrint. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)