While other problems plague MP, Poster gives CM jitters | N.D.Sharma

Published on 13-02-2008 In National

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While other problems plague MP, Poster gives CM jitters

With the elections approaching, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Madhya Pradesh is showing signs of nervousness. The recurring power crisis is the single most important issue highlighted by a party committee, which was constituted to pinpoint the problems that needed to be tackled urgently for a smooth sailing in the polls. The power crisis had played a crucial role in throwing the Congress government of Digvijay Singh out of power in 2003.

The committee has also drawn the party leadership's attention to the BJP's dwindling support among the tribals and Dalits and suggested some emergency measures to win over the confidence of these sections. To add to the woes of the leadership, several parts of the State are facing drought and shortage of water for drinking and irrigation, capped by the bungling in the Public Distribution System (PDS), which affects the poorer sections directly.

However, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan's overriding concern at the moment seems to be the bad law and order situation, of which he learnt not from murders, rapes, kidnappings and chain snatchings but from an 'objectionable' poster. To his horror, half a dozen prints of the poster were found pasted on the outer wall of the government bungalow, which was allotted to him when he was Member of Parliament (which he still retains, in addition to the chief minister's official residence) in the high-security Dayanand Nagar area. The poster disturbed Chauhan's tranquility.

The poster has a photograph of Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of the Jaish-e Mohammad, who was among the terrorists taken to Kandahar and set free there for the release of the hijacked plane during the BJP-led NDA government in 1999. The script below the photograph addresses Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani, in Hindi: "is he your uncle that you took him to Kandahar to set him free?"

The idea of the poster seemed to be a reaction to another poster, showing Afzal Guru, sentenced to death for his role in the attack on Parliament. His mercy petition is pending with the President. The BJP's youth and student wings have been holding demonstrations in Bhopal and elsewhere, carrying this poster, and demanding that Guru should be hanged without further delay. They blame the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre for keeping Guru's execution in abeyance. Their demonstrations had not been all that peaceful. The poster was one day pasted on the outer wall of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) office here. The Congress leaders made a little noise, and that was all.

Then, the Maulana Masood Azhar posters were found pasted on the outer wall of the chief minister's 'other' residence.

A disturbed Chauhan called the Director-General of Police and other top functionaries to his residence (the official one, and not the one where poster was pasted) and expressed his anguish over the steadily deteriorating law and order situation, which, he said, was reflected in the growing number of various crimes. He told them categorically that he wanted to see the perpetrators of serious crimes apprehended without delay and also a feeling of security provided to everyone in the State.

It would be interesting to note that Chauhan, when he became the chief minister in November 2005, believed there was no rule of law in the State. This he put as his top priority. The Governor's customary address to the Assembly at the beginning of Chauhan's first budget session had specifically stated: "Meri Sarkar ki prathamikata kanoon ka raaj sthapit karna hai" (the priority of my government is to establish the rule of law). The cabinet always approves the Governor's address.

Soon thereafter, Chauhan refused to see anything or hear anything except what the caucus surrounding him wanted him to see or hear. He started maintaining in his public speeches that the law and order situation in the State was "comparatively good". The incidents of heinous crimes like rape and murder had been steadily on the increase. Chain snatchings and vehicle thefts have become common. There is a spurt in atrocities on tribals and Dalits in the countryside.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) gives Madhya Pradesh the dubious distinction of being the State with the highest number of rape cases (2,900) recorded during 2006 The total number of crimes against women registered during the year in Madhya Pradesh was 14,321. The number of crimes against the tribals and children was 1,498 and 3,939, respectively – again the highest in the country. Only in the matter of crimes against the Scheduled Castes (4,214) did the State yield the top position to Uttar Pradesh. The State police chief claims that the number of crimes in Madhya Pradesh is so high only because here every incident is registered. One wonders if even the DGP believes in this facetious excuse. Incidentally, the highest number of complaints against the police (22,224) during the year was also made in Madhya Pradesh.

If the police have not been able to find who is behind the Maulana Masood Azhar poster, they are equally in the dark as to who had driven the luxury car of the kidnapped Mumbai industrialist across half the State. Mumbai garment manufacturer Bhagwandas Chandnani and his wife were travelling in the car from Delhi to Mumbai when they were kidnapped near Mathura and taken to Dhaulpur in Rajasthan in another car. They were released on payment of ransom. Their own car was later found abandoned in the parking lot of the Bhopal railway station. These two are, however, not the only unsolved crimes.

Tailpiece

Lal Krishna Advani has described Shivraj Singh Chauhan as an honest and simple person. Opinions differ on the first attribute but no one disputes that he is a simple man. Take, for instance, the occasion of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Jhabua to lay the foundation stones of a couple of railway projects. When Chauhan's mandarins told him that they had ensured, after putting up a vigorous fight with the PMO, that the chief minister would be seated next to the prime minister at the Jhabua function, Chauhan was simply overjoyed. Not wanting to keep the people of the State deprived of the thrill of this singular achievement for long, he promptly instructed his media managers to get it properly publicised.

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