The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday sought Presidential intervention in dismissing the Uttar Pradesh government and bringing the State under Central rule in view of the “breakdown of law and order” in the province and recent communal violence in Muzaffarnagar.
Party president Rajnath Singh led a delegation of legislators from U.P. to Rashtrapati Bhavan to submit a memorandum to this effect to President Pranab Mukherjee. The BJP also wanted an enquiry into the chain of events by a Supreme Court-appointed high-level committee, equal compensation to victims from all communities, and withdrawal of cases against “innocent” people, including some of the party’s own leaders.
Earlier this month, at the height of the riots, the BJP made a similar demand and assured the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance of its support in Parliament for dismissing the Samajwadi Party (SP) government. The “dismiss-the-SP-government” demand is being reiterated in the wake of the arrest of two BJP MLAs over the weekend.
According to the memorandum, the Muzaffarnagar violence was the result of communal politics indulged in by the SP. Referring to a sting operation conducted by a television channel, the BJP accused the SP — which is lending outside support to the UPA at the Centre — of engineering the violence for narrow political ends.
Law and order
The memorandum also charged that the law and order situation in the province had been on the decline for the past couple of years.
The BJP flagged the growing incidence of communal riots in the State. Accusing the Congress of turning a blind eye to the ‘polarising’ ways of the Samajwadi Party, the BJP said the U.P. government had lost the moral right to rule because of its “appeasement politics.”
