Dalit leader and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is furious. The former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh (UP) tweeted that the incident of a local leader urinating on an Adivasi/Dalit youth in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh (MP) is shameful, inhuman and condemnable.
The culprit has now been arrested, and a part of his father’s house has been bulldozed. Mayawati said that the MP government woke up to take action against the culprit only after the video of him urinating on a fellow citizen went viral proves its involvement, and that too is very sad.
The horrific incident has shamed the nation and reduced some citizens to tears. A guest on 4PM, an online daily news portal relayed from Lucknow, Rakesh Pathak felt so ashamed that he broke down when the show’s editor in chief Sanjay Sharma asked for his reaction to the incident.
As the camera zoomed in on Pathak, he remained speechless, and sobbed copiously. Pathak is a Bhopal based senior journalist and he said that he is overcome with shame that the inhuman act took place in his home state of MP.
Who Is Pravesh Shukla?
So who is Pravesh Shukla, the man seen urinating on a tribal man's face in a viral video. Shukla is a ruling party leader who failed to show any shame on his arrest, as he posed for cameras.
The police were seen escorting Shukla to jail as if he was a hero! Shukla is a close aide of ruling party legislator Kedarnath Shukla from Sidhi. However, Kedarnath Shukla has claimed he has no connections to the culprit.
However, Pravesh Shukla’s father says that his son has been a ruling party worker for at least seven years, and he is the legislator’s representative in Sidhi.
“Those in power are enjoying an orgy of atrocities against the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes, the OBC and members of the minorities community across the country. Incidents of barbarism are reported but intellectuals are sitting with their eyes closed. Today a minority of 15 percent people is lording over the majority of 85 percent of citizens,” Dalit leader and Azad Samaj Party chief Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan said.
Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav referred to the same incident as a monstrous heinous act by a BJP worker on a tribal in Madhya Pradesh's Sidhi district as another shameful chapter in the history of centuries of oppression on the oppressed-Dalit society.
“Is this the only achievement of the 18 year rule of the BJP in MP? The BJP will be drowned in its own arrogance”, Yadav predicted.
Bullied In UP
The poor and the helpless continue to be bullied around UP as well. The country’s most populous state and also the most backward is home to a Dalit population of about 21 percent. The members of Other Backward Caste total 40 percent and tribals are about 0.57 percent in UP.
Early this week, a statue of Dalit icon Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was vandalised in the Bargadi Kalan village under Itaunja police station of Lucknow. The villagers retaliated by staging a protest.
The villagers want the miscreants arrested before repairing the sculpture. One villager said that the same statue was attacked a decade ago as well, when the police had filed a first information report (FIR) against unknown people, and no one was ever arrested or taken to task.
Akhilesh Yadav Turns 50
Last Saturday Akhilesh Yadav celebrated his 50th birthday. The one politician who remembered to wish the SP chief him on his birthday was BSP supremo Mayawati.
“Heartiest congratulations to Samajwadi Party chief and former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav on his birthday today and to his family members and best wishes for a long life with good health”, Mayawati Tweeted,
However, there were no birthday greetings to Yadav from Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary, or from Chandrashekhar Azad. The recent lack of camaraderie amongst three of UP’s most popular youth leaders is of considerable concern, especially when it comes to uniting to battle the ruling party out of office in the general elections in 2024.
The rift is not officially acknowledged, but it is also true that Chaudhary is looking around for allies other than the SP. Chaudhary has been talking to Congress leaders in UP. There is talk that the RLD might join hands with the Congress and Azad’s Azad Samaj Party (ASP) to contest the 2024 general elections.
In the urban local body elections held in the state recently, the SP and the RLD had quarrelled over seat sharing. RLD leaders are not shy of accusing the SP today of trying to bully its junior partners in the coalition that seems to be falling apart.
Ever since 2019, the RLD and the SP have been together in a grand alliance with smaller parties like that of Om Prakash Rajbhar’s Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party (SBSP). The SP was accepted as the umbrella that had held its allies together. After Rajbhar left the alliance, the RLD had remained with the SP along with Azad.
According to a RLD leader his party has the support of the Jat population. Together with the Dalit supporters of Ravan and Muslim voters, the RLD is a force to reckon with, at least in western UP.
This is something that the SP fails to acknowledge is the complaint of the RLD even as the popularity of Akhilesh Yadav diminishes with Muslims, and also a section of Yadav voters.
The RLD suspects that it will not get more than two or three tickets to fight the coming Lok Sabha elections to be held next year. The party is preparing itself to contest for at least 15 Lok Sabha seats.
Lightweight Politicians?
After the exit of Om Prakash Rajbhar from the SP, he said that at least one dozen SP members are in contact with him. To which senior SP leader Shivpal Yadav said that these are light weight politicians who open shop on the eve of every election.
The rumour is that Rajbhar from Zahoorabad Assembly Constituency, and a village in district Ghazipur could ally with the ruling party in the next general elections.
Cover Photograph: Madhya Pradesh Chief MinisterShivraj Singh Chauhan washes the feet of a tribal man after the hideous incident where a BJP leader urinated on a helpless tribal boy. MP Assembly elections are due before November this year.