Sonia cautions Mulayam govt

Law and order situation in UP is bad: Congress chief

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday launched a salvo against the Mulayam Singh Yadav government on deteriorating law and order in Uttar Pradesh and said it "appeared to be bad".

"From what I am hearing from the people and by reading newspaper reports it appears that the law and order situation is bad," Gandhi reporters in an informal chat during a programme at the Sudauli Lok Sabha constituency in UP.

What she said later is significant. When asked what she was going to do about it, she said it was a problem and that she would speak to the Centre as well as the state government on this matter.

At other times, this might have been a casual comment but in the context of Governor TV Rajeshwar's long sojourn in New Delhi and amid speculation that he had informed President APJ Abdul Kalam that law and order had deteriorated in the state, Gandhi's statement has some significance.

In the last one month, not only have there been a spate of murders, dacoities and robberies but also a Samajwadi Party MLC Ajit Singh was murdered. The police also fired at a rally by lawyers in UP, leading to sympathetic strikes all over the country by lawyers.

Subsequently, some police officials were shifted but not before it created a political problem for the ruling party in the state.

The Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party have both demanded the resignation of the state government at least twice in the last one month.

Relations between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party have also touched rock bottom with Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh describing in detail the humiliation he had suffered at the dinner for opposition leaders hosted by Sonia Gandhi to which he had gone uninvited.

In between the situation was compounded by MP from Amethi Rahul Gandhi also launching an attack on the Samajwadi Party leadership for the way it was governing the state.

Although it is not yet possible for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre to dismiss the Yadav government on grounds that law and order had failed, things could come to a head if the Congress manages to infuse new confidence in the UPA government by somehow managing to win the Maharashtra elections next month. In that event, some decisive action in UP could be expected.

However, political analysts feel Sonia Gandhi's criticism of the Yadav government, which it is supporting from outside, could also be seen in the context of upcoming by-elections inn the state.

Also, Yadav recently exhorted his partymen to work for the victory of the party in the by-elections as it would help him throw away the crutches provided by the Congress, which "it (the Congress) keeps on threatening to remove".