Lucknow: Former Uttar Pradesh director general of police (DGP) Sulkhan Singh has announced the formation of a political outfit — the Bundelkhand Loktantrik Party — with statehood for the Bundelkhand region as its main goal.
A former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the 1980 batch, Singh belongs to Banda district in UP’s Bundelkhand region. He served as the first UP DGP in the Yogi 1.0 government, and was given a three-month extension of service by the Ministry of Home Affairs a day before he was set to retire on 30 September, 2017.
According to Singh, his party’s main demand is to create a separate state for the Bundelkhand region by combining 15 districts — seven of which fall in UP and eight in Madhya Pradesh. The demand has been raised by several local groups like the Bundeli Sena in the past.
This has also been a poll issue with the larger demand of division of the state into four parts — Harit Pradesh, Purvanchal, Bundelkhand and Awadh — finding resonance.
Spread across parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, the Bundelkhand region makes up almost 12 percent of UP’s geographical area. It faces frequent droughts due to erratic rainfall, an issue further exacerbated by poor irrigation facilities.
According to the Human Development Report of Bundelkhand, published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2012, it is among the most backward regions in central India with the lowest development indicators in the country in some sectors.
The demand for a separate state for Bundelkhand however has never seen any concrete efforts by any political party apart from Mayawati’s BSP, which had adopted a resolution for dividing the state into four parts in 2007, when it was in power.
According to Sulkhan Singh, Bundelkhand is a vast region but it has never really been given the kind of budgetary allocation it requires. “Separate regions have separate needs. No political party is able to understand this,” he told ThePrint.
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‘Ministers from region have no sway’
Singh stressed that public representatives from the region have little influence owing to the area’s low population.
“The population of the region is less. If someone from the region becomes a minister, he has no sway in the government. I saw a poster put up in Banda which had the local MLA’s name displayed more prominently than the minister from the region. This is their haisiyat (status),” he said.
In 2017, when Bundelkhand handed over a win to the BJP in all 19 constituencies, only two leaders from the region were given representation in the government and were made ministers of state — Chandrika Prasad Upadhyay and Manohar Lal Panth.
In the 2022 assembly elections, 16 of the 19 seats in the region were won by the BJP, and MLAs Pant and Ramkesh Nishad were made ministers of state in the Yogi 2.0 cabinet. Swatantra Dev Singh, who served as the BJP’s state unit chief, continues to be a cabinet minister in the government while Ashish Patel of Apna Dal (Sonelal) was also appointed as a cabinet minister in Yogi 2.0. They belong to Orai and Chitrakoot areas of Bundelkhand respectively.
According to Sulkhan Singh, while a lot of activists have been raising the statehood demand through protests, only a “political method can give solution for the problem and not agitation”.
“Only fear of cutting votes will make political parties more serious about the demand,” he added.
‘Ready to support BJP if they announce separate state…’
With his party yet to be registered, Singh says recruitment has already begun and they are ready to field candidates in 2024 Lok Sabha polls provided they get suitable contenders.
“Let’s see what type of people come. If we get the right kind of people who can fight elections, we will give them tickets,” said the former DGP, adding that the party will be headquartered in Banda as of now.
But will the outfit support any major political party like the ruling BJP or SP, which is the principal opposition in the state? Singh said he is open to supporting the BJP in the coming polls if they guarantee a separate state for Bundelkhand region.
“Since they (BJP) are in power in the Centre too, if they agree to this demand, we will be very happy (to support) because this is what we want,” he added.
‘Water bodies encroached by politicians’
Asked why he is making the separate state demand for Bundelkhand, Singh said there is a lot of anarchy in the region. “The needs of Bundelkhand are different. Water scarcity is such a big problem here that we urgently need to store rain water.”
“We need ponds and other water bodies in every village. We need to ensure that ponds which have been occupied by political persons be freed of their occupation,” he further said, alleging that politicians across party lines are involved in this.
“Water table is decreasing and this problem has taken a serious turn. Unfortunately, political interests have been entangled with development at present,” he said.
Asked about the Yogi Adityanath government’s claims of having given enhanced budgetary allocation and schemes to Bundelkhand, he said the region does not need very expensive projects but “more realistic” ones.
The UP government provides a separate budget for the region under the Bundelkhand Development Fund every year and various projects have been announced. However, more than a hundred such projects in the region remain pending, according to reports.
The Yogi administration allocated around Rs 500 crore for the development of Bundelkhand last year in the annual budget and increased the amount sanctioned for the Har Ghar Jal Yojana — aimed towards providing tap water facility in every household — to Rs 19,500 crore from Rs 15,000 crore.
For now, Singh says he has started touring districts in the region starting from Mahoba. “A friend has given me a car, using which I am starting to tour the region. We have no resources, money and are dependent on people’s support.”
Singh has also been quite vocal on his Facebook page on issues of Bundelkhand, policing and even politics. In February, he had written a Facebook post alleging that the BJP hates Kshatriyas (Rajputs) but the latter have fallen into the trap laid by the party.
The Yogi government increased fund allocation for the Har Ghar Jal Yojana from the earlier Rs 15,000 crore, not Rs 1,500 crore. The error is regretted.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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