Is Mathura an Offshoot of What Will Play Out in Western UP?

New Delhi: It was a perfect photo-opportunity on June 2 for the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister in the esteemed company of not one but nine ambassadors of India to countries such as Poland, Iran, Brunei, Joradan, Bulgaria etc.

Nearly 400 kms from UP's capital Lucknow, the holy city of Mathura was burning and 24 people had died including two police officers. Over 40 others were injured in clashes during a drive to evict the illegal occupants of a land.

The self-publicity is important and the UP shining campaign too but as a Samajwadi Party leader, who didn’t wish to be identified, says, "Bina monsoon ki barsaat mein to Akhilesh expose ho ja rahe hain, jab monsoon aayega to kya hoga (Akhilesh is getting exposed when there is no scrutiny. What will happen when elections come)."

He was hinting at the complete failure of the young Yadav in controlling a minor incident in Mathura and letting it flare up when there could be more challenges coming up on the law and order front in the run up to the elections.

Journalist Sharat Pradhan who tracks UP very closely says it reflects poorly on Akhilesh’s control on unabated crime and poor law and order situation in the state.

Officers in Lucknow highlight that after struggling initially Akhilesh may have managed to send this message in the last three years that he is very much in control of his government and that his father and uncles aren’t really holding the strings of the show.

But the Mathura episode has raised serious questions over the supposed generational shift in the Samajwadi Party, given the association the perpetrators allegedly have with a veteran leader of older generation.

With 106 assembly seats Western Uttar Pradesh is one conundrum that analysts often find most difficult to solve before every election in Uttar Pradesh.

Saba Naqvi, an independent journalist, foresees the Mathura incident an offshoot of what will play out in western UP at multiple levels in the run up to the 2017 polls.

Western UP will continue to be the most volatile place where we will see the most extreme campaign, rampant breakdown of law and order and the increase of existing hostilities between the communities," she says.

As the opposition quotes statistics of the state government’s failure on the law and order front, experts are drawing comparisons between Nitish Kumar and Akhilesh Yadav. They add that there were law and order challenges that Nitish Kumar was confronted with in the run up to Bihar elections but he clocked a 24X7 campaign to ensure the narrative of development wasn't hijacked.

Instances are also sighted of repeated clashes between Muslims and Hindus in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s constituency of Azamgarh over minor arguments in the last few months.

"There has already been speculation about large-scale communal violence in the run up to the polls leading to polarisation of voters which could benefit both the BJP and SP. Although there was no Hindu-Muslim angle to the Mathura violence, the fact that followers of a Hindu religious guru had accumulated such a vast dump of sophisticated weapons inside the Ashram has disturbing portents," says BSP supremo Mayawati’s biographer Ajoy Bose.