Uttar Pradesh Guv, Samajwadi Party on collision course over Lokayukta appointment

Lucknow: The ongoing tussle between the Samajwadi Party and Governor Ram Naik in Uttar Pradesh just went uglier. A couple of days after party president Mulayam Singh Yadav rushed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to protest the Governor’s refusal to approve the Lokayukta of the government’s choice, the Uttar Pradesh Assembly has initiated a bill to change the Lokayukta selection process itself.

In the unscheduled meeting with Modi, Mulayam is learnt to have apprised the former about how Naik has been “creating obstacles” in the working of the Akhilesh Yadav government in Lucknow. The appointment of the Lokayukta – retired judge Ravindra Singh Yadav is the government’s choice – has become a bone of contention between the Akhilesh government and Raj Bhawan. The government has sent the name of justice Yadav to Naik five times, and each time Naik has returned it, citing two main reasons. First, the three-member selection panel – comprising the chief minister, leader of opposition and chief justice – never sat together to discuss his name. Second, justice Yadav’s name was sent despite objections raised by the chief justice.

On 27 August, the last day of the Assembly session, the government brought a Bill in the Assembly that seeks to eliminate the chief justice from the process. The Bill sought to amend the existing Act that would finish the role of the chief justice in the process of selection. The bill was passed by both the Houses within one hour amid loud protests by the entire opposition, which staged a walkout. It will now be sent for the Governor’s assent. The new Bill replaces the chief justice with the Vidhan Sabha Speaker in the panel to select the ombudsman. Besides, it introduces a new member - a retired judge of either the Supreme Court or high court.

The present Lokayukta Justice NK Mehrotra has completed his tenure. The Supreme Court had on 2 July issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government on a plea seeking Mehrotra’s removal and till that date the state had failed to find a replacement despite a previous directive by the court. The court sought a reply from the state in four weeks on a PIL filed by one Mahendra Kumar Jain. In April 2014, the Supreme Court had given the state six months to find Mehrotra’s replacement.

Naik completed one year in office on 22 July and in this period, he has written about 175 letters to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister and his cabinet ministers, majority of which were on law and order and issues of land grab. Naik had recently reportedly sought detailed information from Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav to run background checks on nine persons that the state government has recommended to the state Legislative Council under the nominated members category. In addition to his concern over the crime and law and order situation, Naik had last month expressed concern at the dominance of a particular caste in the state government’s bureaucracy, following which Ram Gopal Yadav had demanded his recall.

Expectedly, Naik has been the target of the Samajwadi Party leaders. Senior Minister Mohammad Azam Khan has said on various occasions that the Raj Bhawan had “lost its glory” and had become a “Rajneeti Bhawan”. He had also quipped that Naik looked more like a priest (pujari) than a Governor.

Ram Gopal Yadav had commented that he felt “ashamed” to call the Governor as “Mahamahim” and had sarcastically urged prime minister to declare Naik as the BJP’s chief minister candidate for 2017 election. And Naresh Agrawal had gone one step further, saying that the Governor “must not function as an agent of the RSS or the BJP otherwise the SP would be forced to launch a halla bol against him.”

The sequence of events is quite similar to what had happened in Lucknow in February 2007 when the Samajwadi Party had launched a full-fledged confrontation against the then Governor TV Rajeshwar. At that time, all Samajwadi Party seniors including the then Assembly Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey, who is not supposed to attend any party’s political rally, had joined the anti-Governor protests. Pandey, incidentally, is also the present Speaker of the Assembly. Rajeswar had been critical of the deteriorating law and order situation in the state.

Besides Pandey, other Samajwadi Party leaders including late Janeshwar Mishra had dubbed Rajeswar as a “Congress agent” and had decried the then UPA government and the Congress party of using the Raj Bhavan for political conspiracy against the SP government. Ram Gopal Yadav had then also said that said the Governor “was behaving like chief minister”.

Hundreds of slogan-shouting party workers had headed towards the Raj Bhavan in Lucknow where a strong posse of police personnel stopped them.

Although the Samajwadi Party has so far not announced its plans to have a similar campaign against the present occupant of the Raj Bhawan, it is learnt that a section of leaders is pressing for such a confrontation, hoping that it might effectively divert the attention from repeated criticism of the state government over the law and order front.