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- INDIA
Will Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath succeed in saving his chair, is the million dollar question in the country’s most populated, and backward province.
The CM has another three years to complete his second term in office. However, the loss of Lok Sabha seats in UP from 62 to 33 last June has got him in trouble with party bosses in Delhi who would like to see him go right now.
That has made the CM work overtime to make sure that he remains in office till the next assembly elections in 2027.
On the eve of by-polls to 10 Assembly seats vacated by legislatures who are now Lok Sabha members, the CM has taken several steps to ensure the victory of the ruling party. For example he has decided that Muslim and Yadav officials will not be posted in districts where the by-polls will be held.
In a move to impress Hindu voters all owners of eateries along the Kanwar pilgrimage route were asked to identify their stalls with a nameplate, in an obvious attempt to identify Muslim hawkers.
The CM bulldozed nearly 2000 structures in an eviction drive in Akbarnagar in June but last July the demolition of Pant Nagar and Indraprastha Nagar, two Hindu-majority colonies in Lucknow marked by the Irrigation Department as a flood prone area was halted. Akbarnagar was flattened, mainly because, the suspicion is that it was a Muslim populated slum.
The CM got a bill to strengthen the state conversion law which was introduced last month. A more stringent version of the 2021 UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, the bill was passed in the 100-member Vidhan Parishad, the Upper House where the ruling party holds a 79-member majority.
The law is meant to counter ‘love jihad’ and prevent relationships between Hindu and Muslim lovers. Right-wing Hindu groups disapprove of ‘love jihad’ saying that Muslim men marry Hindu women only to convert them.
While the anti-conversion bill has been passed, the UP government’s proposed bill of the UP Nazul Properties (Management and Utilisation For Public Purpose) ordinance was referred to the select committee in the upper house after it was passed in the lower house of the UP assembly.
The law seeks to empower the state to reclaim Nazul land leased to private individuals and entities for public use and for development activities.
What Is Nazul Land?
Nazul is non-agricultural land used by the government for public purposes of building schools, hospitals or public parks. The concept dates back to colonial rule when local kings and kingdoms had opposed the British. When the British had won local battles, they had often taken into possession the land of their defeated enemy.
After Independence from the British, the land occupied by the colonists was vacated. Lacking proper documentation to prove ownership, the property was marked Nazul land, implying that it belonged not to an individual but to the government.
Today thousands of families have occupied Nazul land. Often these families are poor and unemployed and deprived of housing facilities by the government.
That is why even ruling party leaders are against the demolition and displacing of people occupying Nazul land. The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) legislature from Prayagraj Siddharth Nath Singh is concerned that there will be chaos in many cities that like Prayagraj are settled on Nazul land.
The Bill hopes to consolidate all Nazul properties in the name of the government after the lease expires, irrespective of the instalments already deposited by individual owners to renew the lease according to earlier policies.
Pointing to the CM’s love for more land, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav suggested that the BJP should call itself the Bharitya Jameen (land) Party.
However, the CM remains bullish about the way he is running the affairs of the state. Banking on his popularity as an icon of the idea of Hindutva, he continues to do everything that will reinforce his Hindutva agenda.
Proud Of His Popularity
The CM has taken on the responsibility of winning the Milkipur Assembly seat in Ayodhya and the Katehari seat in Ambedkarnagar in the same neighbourhood in the assembly by-polls to be held soon. He is campaigning also to win over backward class and Dalit votes, reminding the poor how the ruling party is taking care of them by giving them free ration.
This scheme was successful in UP where it had benefited a large chunk of the population directly. In the 2022 assembly elections in UP beneficiaries of the free ration scheme had voted generously for the CM.
The ruling party had expected the same results in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections but has been disappointed ever since the election results were announced last June to show a huge loss of seats.
Despite the loss, the CM seldom tires of saying that his commitment to Hindutva is firm. To continue to seek the attention of the large population of Dalit voters at home, the CM stressed the suffering of Hindus in Bangladesh recently, adding that 90 percent of Hindus there are Dalit converts.
If the CM succeeds in winning a maximum number of seats out of the 10 that are being contested in the by-polls, he will have also consolidated the Hindu vote bank for bigger victories in times to come.
He would have also improved his reputation in the eyes of the national leadership of his party, and saved his political future.
The CM’s attempt is to get the backward caste voters and Dalits to also vote for his party. He hopes to convince the majority population of the backward tribes and scheduled castes to overlook caste concerns and to give up their demand for reservation in return for five kilos of free ration and to continue to be counted as a majority population of the Hindu religion with recognition and privileges less than the minority population of upper caste Hindus.
Elsewhere In UP
While the political leadership has the by-polls on its mind, crimes against the poor and helpless continue in UP.
The news from district Bulandshahar is that a government employee had first raped a six-year-old, and then proceeded soon after to molest a goat that was tied to a pole of the same home!
