ON 13 May, Mayawati completed 3 years in office. In these three years, the BSP has systematised an extremely repressive regime in the state with steady erosion of all democratic rights.

It is indeed ironical that despite the Chief Minister being a woman and a Dalit, the crimes against these very social groups have increased tremendously under her rule, and the state police on several occasions have even refused to register their complaints. Mocking BSP’s poll-time promise of cleansing the state’s politics of criminal elements, we find that many known criminals, mafia dons and history-sheeters have found a safe haven in the BSP itself. The cleansing act has been reduced to an occasional arrest or a rare farcical expulsion. The abysmal state of law and order was evident when in March 2010 communal riots were allowed to escalate and continue for days in Bareilly, while the entire state and police machinery was kept occupied for “smooth” conduct of birthday celebrations of Kanshiram on March 15, 2010.

Farmers in particular are victims of the intensified loot and repression, at the mercy of middlemen who procure their produce at below the minimum support price and then sell them at support price. Recently, in Maikalganj (Lakhimpur Khiri) CPI(ML) activists caught one such truck that was carrying food grains procured from farmers by the middlemen. Farmers protesting against grab of fertile land by big corporate houses have been greeted with police firing as was recently witnessed across the stretch from Noida to Mathura. University campuses have also been targeted by this anti-democratic regime with a ban on student elections continuing across campuses in UP.

According to the figures released by the National Crime Record Bureau, the number of people killed in police firing in 2008 in UP is more than the number killed in police firing even in Kashmir. UP tops the list in encounter killings as well as in custodial deaths. The State Human Rights Commission has been purposely weakened leaving a majority of human rights violation cases unheard. Bureaucracy and police have been given a free hand to curb all democratic struggles raising issues of lives, livelihood and rights of poor people in the state. The entire range of forces of people’s struggle, civil rights groups and particularly CPI(ML) activists have been targets of politically motivated assaults and repression.
A case in point is a string of incidents in Ghazipur (which in recent times has emerged as a significant area of the CPI(ML) movement), which indicate that the state government has decided to systematically implicate our leaders and activists in numerous false cases and keep them behind bars in a desperate bid to curb the democratic struggles raising the concerns of the poor and the marginalised. On 28 September 2009, in the Lahana village of the district, our party activists caught some middlemen red handed while they were trying to sell away 16 sacks of rice for school mid-day meal scheme. The confiscated rice sacks were then deposited in the local police station. Later, when police did not take any action against the head of this racket, the party organised a Lahana March on 25 November, where the DSO gave a written assurance to initiate action against the corrupt traders and contractors involved in the black marketing of mid-day meal rice. But no action was initiated against these contractors and the middlemen. Instead, the CPI(ML) activists who caught the racketeers red handed were framed with false charges. Every time our leaders and activists have raised issues of corruption and siphoning of public funds, atrocities on the adivasis, they have been arrested, tortured in the police station and jailed with false charges under the 7th CLA act, Gangster Act etc slapped on them.

In a recent incident, on 14 May 2010, when CPI (ML) district head Rampyaare Ram and AISA’s Rajiv Gupta had gone to Ghazipur district jail to meet some of our party activists falsely framed and  arrested under the Gangster Act, the police officials humiliated them hurling casteist abuses and assaulted them inside the police station itself. When they protested, they were booked under several fake cases and were subsequently arrested. Inside the jail too, ML activists and leaders are being targeted and denied even basic minimum facilities like bed and utensils.

Pilhibit has emerged as another key centre of repression of ML activists. Activists protesting against corruption in public distribution system, misuse of BPL funds and other malpractices have been brutally targeted and booked under false charges. In this series as many as 54 CPI(ML) leaders and activists have been jailed  in recent times.

Against the organised loot, corruption and mounting state repression by the Mayawati govt, CPI(ML) organised a march in Varanasi on 2 June 2010. It was led by Polit Bureau member Comrade Ramji Rai and CPI(ML) UP state secretary Comrade Sudhakar Yadav. Despite the sweltering heat of the summer afternoon, hundreds of people and activists, including a large number of women, participated in the march. They marched from Cantt. Station to the Block office, raising slogans against the anti-people and repressive Mayawati government and demanded the release of all the ML activists booked under false charges in Ghazipur. The party state unit has decided to observe 26 June (Emergency Day) as Anti-Repression Day against the state-sponsored loot and repression.

Arun Kumar