The criminal-politician Atiq Ahmed is a Robin Hood-like figure celebrated by Muslims and Dalits, and can cut into the BSP-SP candidate’s votes.
A day before the voting in the Phulpur Lok Sabha bypoll, the booth agents are calling Samajwadi Party leader Richa Singh to say they can’t manage the booth in the morning. They say they have gotten calls from independent candidate Atiq Ahmed’s men.
It is crisis time. And now, Singh has had to find quick replacements in at least 40 booths.
Ahmed, her party colleague until recently, is now contesting independently. How many votes will he cut? The lowest estimate anyone gives you is 40,000. Some go up to a lakh.
Ahmed is contesting from jail, and votes for him could help the Bharatiya Janata Party win the keenly watched bypoll.
Why, then, are many Muslims set to vote for him?
The Robin Hood of Allahabad
“Since I was born, I have only seen this man come to our aid. He’s everything for the people here,” says Saifi Ahmed, 24, a law student who’s part of the criminal-politician’s campaign.
Atiq Ahmed first became MLA in 1989, nearly three decades ago.
The Atiq Ahmed you will read about in the news is a mafia don with at least 42 cases against him, including murder. But there’s another Atiq Ahmed of the galis and mohallas of Allahabad West, a Robin Hood-like figure celebrated by Muslims and Dalits.
He is feared and revered in equal measure, a bit like the government. For a lot of people, he is the government. He’s been a Lok Sabha MP only once, but they still call him Saansad Ji, as if no one else became Phulpur MP before him, or after. It’s another matter that people who’ve occupied that honour include Jawaharlal Nehru, V.P. Singh and until a few months ago, the current deputy chief minister of UP, Keshav Prasad Maurya.
In Allahabad West, one of the five Vidhan Sabha constituencies that make up Phulpur, Ahmed is the people’s Nehru and people’s Maurya. They turn to him when there’s a property dispute or when they can’t find a spot in the graveyard. When a poor family does not even have the money to hire a van to carry a dead body to the Sangam for cremation, Ahmed pays for it. They invite him to weddings and get expensive gifts in return, taking care of the dowry. They knock at his door when someone is harassing a woman in the family. If someone can’t find a job, a word from Ahmed will help.
Some of this is the usual patronage politicians distribute with their ill-gotten wealth. But Ahmed goes further. He is Bhai, not very different from the image of Salman Khan. For this, he has to be the unchallenged don of the neighbourhood. His supporters say he has reduced crime in the area: after all, no other criminal is allowed to exist.
Ahmed doesn’t mind being called bahubali. It’s also a word for god, he told TV reporters once. He is not satisfied with the number of cases against him, so he exaggerates them. In a speech, he even said he had 188 cases against him, because 42 just doesn’t sound big enough a number. He said this is the price one pays for fighting for the poor.
The Wikipedia entry on him has obviously been writter by someone from his team:
“Atiq Ahmed (born 10 August 1962) is not an Indian criminal-politician but Opposition and money maker people abused him many time as he belong to Muslim Community and their are many political reasons as he worked for poor peoples and worked for farmers so we can say he is a socialist person. In india those who work for common people he has to fight with LandMafia and british worker/Follower RSS peoples as we can see in india more than 90% people belong to poor or lower middle class and many of them don’t have house to live. So If you are fighting for poor citizen then it will take long time and also Indian legal system is very poor and getting a justice It takes more than a decade.”
His money, people say, comes mainly from real estate. He is not one of those politicians who modestly describes himself as a social worker in his CV. His affidavits describe his profession as “Contractor, Builder, Proprty Dealer [sic], agriculture.”
Ahmed versus Raju Pal
As an MLA, Ahmed was Mulayam Singh Yadav’s man in Allahabad. Yadav would let some of his party colleagues govern their areas as mini CMs; they ruled the place. Ahmed was one such mini-CM. When he became Lok Sabha MP in 2004, he had to vacate the Allahabad West Vidhan Sabha seat. Bypolls ensued. His brother contested from the Samajwadi Party, but surprisingly, Raju Pal of the Bahujan Samaj Party won. Feeling humiliated, his brother went and allegedly shot Raju Pal dead.
The murder of a sitting MLA, allegedly by a sitting MP’s defeated brother, sent shockwaves in UP politics. Since Pal was Hindu, the killing also took a communal colour – if a Muslim criminal kills a Muslim, it is crime; if he kills a Hindu, it must be jihad.
After the killing of Pal came the delimitation of 2008. The number of Muslims in Ahmed’s area reduced. Ahmed tried changing parties, disappeared as a sitting MP to evade arrest, got arrested as a sitting MP, but none of this ended his political relevance. Thousands of people turn up for him when he is brought to the Allahabad High Court for hearing.
Ahmed versus Akhilesh
The man trying to end his raj is Akhilesh Yadav. Trying to change the Samajwadi Party’s image as a party of criminals, Akhilesh Yadav began sidelining people like Ahmed, and certainly wanted to not be seen with them. In June 2016, Akhilesh Yadav snubbed Ahmed on stage. The video went viral, and is remembered even today by his supporters. “He was pushed off stage!”
In December 2016, a student of Allahabad’s Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences was suspended for cheating. He was a student of Bachelor of Technology (Dairy). He and his friends went and threatened the teachers, resulting in his expulsion. The student also happened to be a private tutor to Ahmed’s son. When he learnt of this, Ahmed rushed to the university in his caravan of cars. CCTV cameras captured him, with his trademark moustache and beret cap, leading the charge. His men went around thrashing teachers and security staff, brandishing their rifles.
Ahmed was expecting a ticket from Kanpur Cantt, and Mulayam Singh Yadav had declared his name for the seat. He went from Allahabad to Kanpur in a caravan of 500 cars. When asked about his cavalcade delaying ambulances, Ahmed said, “Did you expect me to come to Kanpur on a bicycle?”
As Akhilesh Yadav snatched the party away from his father, Ahmed was denied any ticket. He reluctantly supported the Samajwadi Party’s candidate for Allahabad West, Richa Singh, a progressive student leader from Allahabad University. She lost to the BJP nevertheless.
The last straw
Ahmed wanted his party to declare Bal Kumar Patel as the candidate for the present Lok Sabha bypoll. Bal Kumar Patel would no doubt have been a strong candidate among the Kurmis – after all, he is the brother of Dadua, the Robin Hood of the Kurmis of Chitrakoot. India’s second-biggest dacoit after Veerappan, Dadua was killed in an encounter by the UP Police in 2007.
But Akhilesh Yadav wants to change his party’s goonda image, even if it costs him a few seats. “It is a transitional pain,” says Richa Singh.
When the SP announced the candidature of Nagendra Pratap Singh Patel for the bypoll, the posters had Atiq Ahmed’s photographs on them. But on the last day for nomination, he decided to contest independently from jail. People see it as a masterstroke by the BJP, as Ahmed freely calls up journalists from jail, telling them how he needed to avenge his humiliation and show Akhilesh Yadav who the real boss is. Hell hath no fury like a bahubali scorned.
Son versus son
The face of his campaign is Atiq’s 19-year-old son Umar, a law student, who walks and talks with the swagger of a bahubali-in-the-making. His younger brother is also famous for simple things like firing gunshots in weddings at just 12 years of age.
“We are not cutting votes, the SP is cutting votes,” Umar says. “It is the SP that is working as the BJP’s B-team. We are the ones winning.”
who told you he is Robinhood, he is just another criminal
So if BJP does win this by poll, the reason for this is told in advance “It had nothing to do with either NDA or BJP or Modi or Yogi”. Good hatchet job done.