HC seeks details of communal riots during Akhilesh Yadav's regime

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has sought details of all the riots that have taken place since the Akhilesh Yadav regime was installed on March 15 last year.

The bench of justices Imtiyaz Murtaza and Arvind Kumar Tripathi-II passed the direction to the state government on Tuesday on hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by social activist Nutan Thakur.

Thakur has sought CBI investigation of all major riots that have taken place after formation of the new government. She has also demanded that a sitting high court judge be inducted in the one-man Justice Vishnu Sahai Commission, set up by the state government to probe the recent Muzaffarnagar riots in which 48 people have been killed.

After hearing arguments of the petitioner’s counsel Asok Pande, the court directed the state government to apprise the court within two weeks about the writs on communal riots already pending in the Supreme Court and the Allahabad high court.

According to the PIL, the actions and policies of the current government and its officials reflect a definite tilt towards a particular community. In all the riots that took place over the last 18 months, the administration shied away from taking action against culprits of one particular community, the petition states. “This has resulted in a sense of mistrust among members of the other community, including the petitioner,” it adds.

The governance and administration of Uttar Pradesh, Thakur contends “has unnecessarily and improperly acquired an extremely communal colour of its own, where Muslim appeasement seems to be the order of the day”.

The petitioner states that there has been a spate of communal and sectarian violence in the state ever since the SP government took over. “This almost non-stop occurring of violence shows that there is something dangerous happening inside. This could be something related with changing social complexion, religious interplay, political rumblings or administrative lapses/incompetence, etc,” she says in her petition.

The PIL points out that if timely and appropriate action had been taken by the local police and administration, the situation in Muzzaffarnagar would not have spiraled out of control. There is a widespread feeling that in almost all the riots during the Akhilesh Yadav regime, “the UP Police has failed to live up to the mark”, it states.