We have seen it all now. Mulayam Singh Yadav defended Amaramani Tripathi, accused in the Madhumita murder case, as the “saviour of UP.” Tripathi is being rewarded for voting in favor of the SP government at a time when Mulayam Singh Yadav valued support from any quarter. The Samajwadi Party (SP) has forgotten its high decibel campaign for Tripathi’s removal from the state cabinet earlier this year. Upon his removal from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) government, Amar Singh, the General Secretary of the SP, had declared in a television program that Mayawati would ensure that Tripathi is not subject to the due process of law, and soon would be back as minister.   It is comforting to know that the SP intends to keep the promises that Mayawati might have made to her own partymen! Interestingly, while the case was being investigated, Tripathi had accused Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh of hatching a political conspiracy against him, a charge he later withdrew during his interrogation by the CBI.

Tripathi epitomises the crimialised character of UP politics today. He came into the limelight with his association with Harishanker Tewari, mafia don and former Congress minister in UP.  Tripathi has a long criminal record with 33 cases pending against him including five related to murder. Despite this, there is not a single large party in UP that has not included Tripathi on its rolls, evidence of the close politician-criminal nexus in the state. Tripathi has been a member successively of the CPI, the Congress (I), the UP Loktantrik Congress Party, the BSP and now the SP. He was also a minister in the BJP-led government in the state. Unfortunately for him, he was accused of being involved in a kidnap-for-ransom case, and Chief Minister Rajnath Singh dropped him from the Cabinet.

Tripathi is also the classic example of the floor-crossing phenomenon that is no longer regarded as a betrayal of the voters’ confidence in Indian politics. MLAs in UP openly demand ministerial berths in exchange for political support and UP has the dubious distinction of having the largest cabinets in India.  In complete defiance of electoral and political accountability, Tripathi has bargained his muscle power for political appointment in successive governments in UP. He engineered splits in the Congress and the LCP, was rewarded by the BSP for the latter and has now been publicly recognized by the UP Chief Minister as the savior of UP for having quit the BSP and joined the SP.  In fact, both Mayawati and Mulayam Singh Yadav recognize Tripathi’s abilities as kingmaker in UP politics, and consequently have no intention of letting him suffer the due process of law.

In fact, the evasion from the arm of the law began as soon as the news of Madhumita’s murder became public. The investigation took many months over which Tripathi is accused of tampering with evidence and obstructing justice. After arrest, he managed to check into a hospital to avoid the inconvenience of being interrogated at the CBI’s office in Lucknow. While he has been remanded to judicial custody for a period of 14 days, the Chief Minister of the state insists on defending Tripathi’s indefensible act of murdering a pregnant woman.

There is no longer even a pretence of public accountability and ethical practice in UP politics.  Where do we go from here? We have hit rock bottom, and hopefully the next step cannot take us any lower but onto a path of reform. However, given the fractured nature of electoral politics in the state, it is not possible to expect any political party in the state to initiate a cleansing of its own ranks. The judicial machinery in the state must exhibit a sense of public responsibility and ensure that Tripathi is subject to the rule of law.

There is a crying need to prevent criminals from contesting elections.  The existing law passed in 2002 on persons convicted of two heinous crimes being debarred from contesting election is not enough to stem the rot in our politics. It provides too many loopholes to criminal politicians to tamper with and evade the process of law while continuing in public life. It is mystifying as to why an offender must be convicted on two counts before being disqualified from fighting the elections! This displays the total lack of commitment on the part of political parties to break the criminal-politician nexus. Charge sheeted persons must be debarred from contesting elections. A charge-sheet is the culmination of a police investigation and proof that the court has recognized that there is enough evidence against the accused to admit the charges. The membership of our political parties and legislatures directly affects the health of our democracy; this is not an issue that can be taken lightly or dealt with on an ad hoc basis.