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Mayawati sets UP police on the dissidents

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has let loose her police force to "teach a lesson" to some of the legislators who are fuelling the dissidence against her.

Police raided the houses of at least four independent and one Bharatiya Janata Party legislator on one pretext or the other on Friday.

While the raid on independent MLA Dhananjay Singh's house was officially justified as a move to track him down because he is "wanted" in several criminal cases, top police officers were at a loss to explain why they had suddenly turned the heat on other legislators.

But far from cowing them down, the drastic action has provoked greater defiance from the 'rebels'.

Among the other victims of Friday's raids was Ramashish Rai, a BJP member of the legislative council, who has been at the forefront of the rebellion. While the others do have one or the other criminal case pending, Rai has a clean record.

"The police claimed that they were looking for Dhananjay Singh in my house," a visibly sore Rai said, "but eventually ended up finding no one." Reacting sharply to the "dirty strong-arm tactics adopted by the chief minister", he said, "This is bound to compel us to intensify our agitation."

Though he claimed that any formal decision would only be taken after a meeting of all dissidents on Saturday, Rai called for severing all ties with Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party. "Now that she has decided to throw all democratic norms to the winds, I would suggest that we completely snap ties with her party."

So far, the dissidents had only been demanding that the Bharatiya Janata Party pull out all its ministers from the Mayawati government and give her only external support.

The police arrested Dhananjay Singh's nephew from his parental home in Jaunpur. But raids at the residences of Raja Ram Pandey and Pappu Jaiswal yielded no results. Both remained untraceable. Likewise a police party was trying to track down Ajit Singh, a notorious Lucknow-based criminal turned BJP member of the Upper House, who had enjoyed complete immunity from the law so far.

Pandey, who is an alleged gangster turned builder, switched several parties to ultimately join the Samata Party in the hope of getting a Cabinet berth, but in vain. Jaiswal, a powerful liquor magnate, is an independent.

Ganga Bhakt Singh, who was leading the band of BJP dissidents, also expressed displeasure at the police action. "She has only proved our point that she is an outright dictator," he told rediff.com

BJP general secretary Rajnath Singh, who had been specially sent to Lucknow to quell the crisis, also appeared to be giving up. While he exuded confidence about containing the crisis in the morning, his sangfroid had evaporated by evening and the former chief minister looked quite tense. "Now it will be either this way or that," he retorted when asked about the situation.

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