Missing in action: Opposition fights shy of taking on bulldozer drive in UP

Haji Fazlur Rehman, Saharanpur MP elected from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), decided that things had come to a head in his town when on June 12 the administration rolled in bulldozers and razed the properties — deemed as “illegal” — belonging to Muzammil and Abdul Wakeer. Muzammil and Wakeer have been accused of spearheading the June 10 protests outside a Saharanpur mosque, after the Friday prayers, against former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s remarks on the Prophet.

Rehman reached out to the local Samajwadi Party (SP), Rash­triya Lok Dal (RLD), and Congress members to forge a coalition of the Opposition and pressure the administration to call off the crackdown on Muslims. It was Rehman’s own initiative because the BSP president, Mayawati, did not ask him for any kind of action. Her reaction was confined to a tweet in which she criticised the Uttar Pradesh government for creating “an atmosphere of fear and terror” and demanded the arrest of Sharma. “I felt enough was enough because innocent young persons were targeted in the most horrible ways by police. If the Opposition doesn't step up, then who will?” said Rehman. So far, his efforts have not coalesced into anything concrete and that reflects the quandary within UP’s Opposition on the ongoing upheaval.

That the Opposition is tiptoe­ing around the post-protest deve­lopments was evident in what Ma­irajuddin Ahmed, RLD’s general secretary, said: “We need a more aggressive Opposition but the SP has to take the lead. But first of all, the courts have to take cognizance of objectionable statements. Protests of the kind we witnessed are not necessary. There are other pressing matters like inflation.”

The SP, with 111 legislators in a House of 403, is the largest entity in the Opposition. Yet, it took incessant questioning on social media to force a tweet from Akhilesh Yadav, SP president and leader of the Opposition, conde­mning the demolition of the house of Afreen Fatima, former JNU student and activist and researcher in Allahabad, by the Prayagraj Development Authority on June 11. Afreen’s father Javed Mohammed is a leader of the Welfare Party of India. She and Mohammed were on the Yogi Adityanath government’s radar since they participated in the agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act in 2019, although the government claimed that portions of the flattened property were “illegally” raised and had to be torn down and the motive, therefore, was not “political vendetta”.  

Akhilesh stated that “our culture, religion, law, and the Constitution” do not sanction such punishments. That was it. Rajendra Chaudhary, SP spokesperson and member of the legislative council, said: “There is no need (for the SP) to stage an agitation. We will work within the framework of the Constitution. We are committed to ensuring justice for the minorities.”

Sanjay Lathar, SP’s former Opposition leader in the Legislative Council, said: “We will fight legal battles. That’s why we gave a Rajya Sabha berth to (Kapil) Sibal.” As “evidence” of the SP’s “responsibility” towards Muslims, Lathar said of the four candidates nominated for the impending Legislative Council elections, two are Muslims: Jasmer Ansari, former MLA from Laharpur, and Shahnawaz Khan, son of Sarfaraz Khan, a loyalist of SP veteran from Rampur, Azam Khan. Like other parties, the SP believed its obligation towards Muslims, even in particularly harsh circumstances, was confined to disbursing patronage.

To put matters in perspective, Akhilesh’s relations with Khan, a cherished aide of his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, soured during the period when Khan and his family were incarcerated on a slew of charges. Only when Akhi­lesh’s indifference towards Khan — it was alleged that he did not visit him even once in jail — was commented upon and discussed in the public domain, he said.

Once Khan secured bail after former Congressman Sibal fought his case in the apex court, Akhiles­h visited the ailing leader at a Delhi hospital. He made more amends by sending Sibal to the Upper House and giving a ticket to Asim Raja, a long-term Khan associate, to contest the forthcoming Rampur Lok Sabha by-poll. It was speculated that Khan wanted a ticket for his wife but changed his mind once Akhilesh chose RLD chief Chaudhary Jayant Singh over his wife, Dimple Yadav, for a place in the Rajya Sabha.

“That’s another proof of our commitment towards the minorities because the RLD-SP alliance is important to keep the Jat-Muslim combine intact in western UP,” claimed Lathar.

That the SP is keen not to overestimate its “pro-Muslim” antecedents was articulated by another spokesperson, Sunil Singh Yadav. “It’s not a question of only taking up the cudgels for Muslims. We are there to defend whichever community is hara­ssed and victimised. In Unnao, my home town, even Hindu homes were bulldozed,” he said.

The RLD and the Congress spoke in a similar vein. Sunil Rohtas, the RLD spokesperson, said: “Our focus is presently on fighting and winning the Rampur and Azamgarh (Lok Sabha) by-polls.”

Aradhana Mishra, one of the two Congress legislators, said: “The Congress’s stand is clear. In such cases (of protests), legal procedures must come into play. If we, the lawmakers, do not repose our faith in the Constitution, how can we expect people to?”