Nistula Hebbar

Mafia–don–turned politician, Atiq Ahmad, who has been a five–term MLA in Uttar Pradesh and Lok Sabha MP from Phulpur, may now be lodged in jail in Gujarat, but his shadow looms large on the poll narrative in the area in the form of a government–run bulldozer.

From 1989 to 2017, either he or his kin have contested the polls in the State, especially in and around Prayagraj. This time, however, its Mr. Ahmad’s demolished property which is playing its role in the polls, as a symbol of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s government’s crackdown on “Bahubalis” or strongmen like Mr. Ahmad and Mukhtar Ansari who had dominated the politics and criminal landscape of the area for long starting from the late 1980s and only tapering off well into the 2000s.

The word “bulldozer” (used to demolish properties related to Mr. Ahmad and even Mr. Ansari’s Ghazal Hotel in Ghazipur) has become a euphemism deployed by the BJP campaign to denote ‘suraksha’ (safety) and law and order.

A Minister in the Yogi Adityanath government, Siddharth Nath Singh, is in the fray to defend his seat of Allahabad (West) which had returned Mr. Ahmad to the Assembly multiple times and had never been a BJP seat till Mr. Singh won it in 2017, and is not shying away from using the word ‘Bulldozer’. In fact, Mr. Ahmad’s wife Shaista Parveen had got a ticket from the All India Majlis-i-Ittehadul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) but did not file nomination papers after Mr. Ahmad took a call to stay away from the poll fray.

“I am the experimental boy of the Bulldozer Baba [Mr. Yogi Adityanath] because while bulldozers were deployed to remove encroachments on illegally occupied land in all 403 constituencies in U.P., it was in Prayagraj, on Atiq Ahmad’s occupied property, that not only was a bulldozer deployed but Chief Minister Yogiji also performed Bhoomi Poojan [ground breaking ceremony] to build 75 houses for the poor,” he said. According to the U.P. government figures, around 1.5 lakh acres have been freed from encroachment.

Gopal Kunwar, local resident near the Civil Lines property that Mr. Singh speaks of, acknowledged that the mafiosi who had dominated the politics of the area had seen a decline in recent years. “We are able to move around freely, which was not the case a few years ago, when shootouts used to happen openly,” he said recalling the murder of former MLAs Jawahar Yadav in 1996 and Raju Pal in 2005. Mr. Ahmad has been chargesheeted in Pal murder case by the CBI.

For the BJP, free rations for the poor through the pandemic period and the narrative of ‘suraksha’ are important cornerstones of their campaign to get re-elected in Uttar Pradesh.