Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday issued a veiled warning to Governor T V Rajeshwar for allegedly overstretching his place as Constitutional head of the state.
"The Governor must follow the democratic and Constitutional norms expected of the high office; I would like to advise him to shun indulgence in matters that should not concern him," Yadav said, in reply to questions at a press conference on Thursday noon.
He was reacting to certain observations made by Rajeshwar while addressing the annual state police parade on Thursday morning.
Rajeshwar had raised questions over the role of the police in the recently concluded civic elections across the state as also about the prevailing law and order situation in the state,
"From what I have been told, the police has not been impartial during the conduct of the civic elections in the state; you must see that such conduct is not repeated in future elections," he had told the gathering.
Reflecting his views on the prevailing law and order situation, the Governor had remarked, "It is regrettable that kidnapping has virtually become a Rs 200 crore industry in large parts of Western UP."
Expressing deep concern over issue of licences for carbines to private persons in the state, he said, "Out of the 8,40,000 arms licences issued across the state, as many as 360 were for the otherwise prohibited carbines."
Himself a former police officer who had held the coveted position of Intelligence Bureau chief in the 1960s, Rajeshwar expressed the need for enforcement of a recent Supreme Court order on appointment and tenures of IPS officers.
"It's high time the apex court's order was implemented in the larger interest of not only the cadre but also because it would do a lot of good to policing in the state," he said.
Barely an hour later, as the chief minister came out of his cabinet meeting to address a press conference, he focused all his attention on the Governor's remarks.
"If the Governor says that he received 1000 complaints about the conduct of civic elections, why doesn't he come out with the names of those who have made these complaints," he asked. "What he also needs to find out is how many of these complaints were politically motivated and how many were factual."
In his obvious bid to paint the Governor as a biased man himself, the chief minister went on to ask, "Was it fair for the Governor to be expressing his views on the prevailing law and order situation in the state when the issue has been discussed and debated threadbare on the floor of the state Assembly barely 24 hours earlier?"
He wondered, "How could the Governor talk about impartiality when his own unbiased conduct was liable to be questioned in the light of the fact that he was making accusations, even after the opposition was convinced after the prolonged discussion on law and order in the house."
Reiterating his earlier stand, the chief minister once again challenged the centre to get a comparative study carried out about the prevailing law and order in different states.
"I am confident that if the task was given to a sitting Supreme Court judge, UP would prove to be far better on the law and order front than any of the Congress or Bhartiya Janata Party-ruled states," Yadav said.
Asked to comment on the much-hyped opposition demand for imposition of President's rule to ensure free and fair state Assembly elections due in UP early next year, Yadav shot back, "I just wish to ask these opposition parties why they did not seek President's rule for conduct of elections in Gujarat where hundreds were massacred; likewise why was President's rule not imposed in Maharastra after the Mumbai blasts that led to losses of Rs 10,000 crores?"
While training his guns on the Congress party, Yadav chose to attack the Maharastra government .
"Maharastra is currently ridden with caste clashes and violence; it is such a poorly governed state that they cannot even allow the chief minister of another state to address a rally of his party," he said while referring to the denial of permission to a Samajwadi Party rally in Mumbai earlier this week.
He claimed, "I can assure you that if the permission had been granted, mine would have been a historic rally in Mumbai."
"Just imagine, the Maharastra government not only denied permission to the rally, but even went to the extent of intimidating and assaulting senior leaders of our party, including a local member of Parliament. They were put behind bars for defying the arbitrary orders of the government," he said.
He demanded 'immediate release' of all arrested SP workers.
Promptly accusing Congress President Sonia Gandhi, he added, "I am convinced that all this anti-SP tirade was being run in Maharastra simply because the riot-hit people of Malegaon did not respond favourably to Sonia Gandhi's relief cheques as they did to the assistance offered by the Samajwadi Party to them."