Scene shifts to Maharashtra

THE Modi government wants to follow its dream of "One Country, One Election". Future Lok Sabha elections in India will be held simultaneously with the state Assembly elections throughout the country. Yet, when elections to the four state Assemblies in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir and Chhattisgarh were to be planned, the ECI could not manage to hold even these four simultaneously. It held the J&K and Haryana elections first and postponed Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to the following month!

The state government's decision to give Baba Siddique a state funeral will open the door for many more such requests.

The dates for the polls in my state were announced on October 15, just as time was running out. Voting is scheduled for November 20 and the results will be out on November 23 as newly elected legislators have to take their seats on or before November 26, when the term of the present legislature expires. The Mahayuti government, being steered by the BJP's Devendra Fadnavis, has emptied the state's coffers with tall promises that will be impossible, or, at least, difficult to meet.

In the interregnum strange things are happening in the State’s capital, Mumbai, and its surroundings.  The phenomenon of the “encounter specialist”, which former Police Commissioner Anami Roy had banished to the boondocks, has suddenly reappeared on the scene.

A wannabe specialist called Sanjay Shinde, who started out as an acolyte of an old-timer named Pradeep Sharma, was plucked out from his ‘comfy’ zone and entrusted with the pedestrian task of escorting a child molester from the prison, where he was lodged, for that crime to the Thane Commissionerate’s Crime Branch office for an inquiry into his demanding unnatural sex from a previous wife.

The police ‘encounter’ that occurred in the police vehicle transporting the accused rekindled inspector Shinde’s wish to become an ‘encounter specialist’. It also re-established the Deputy Chief Minister’s credentials as a tough administrator because posters appeared the very next day in Thane and Mumbai of Fadnavis with a revolver or pistol in his hand! That was to restore the public’s faith in the Mahyuti Home Minister’s aura of strength and invincibility.

It also resurrected the public’s thirst for instant justice that gives a dangerous carte blanche to police officers to investigate, prosecute, judge and punish the designated perpetrator. In judicial systems all over the world, the police cannot try and declare an accused guilty. And even more importantly, the police are not empowered to carry out death sentences.

Middle class citizens in particular are jubilant when what they consider quick justice is delivered. What they do not realise is that it also breeds criminality in law-enforcing agencies and encourages its members to turn lawless. The disease then spreads among the fraternity of criminals because the two coexist.

The murder of a long-time Congress politician, who recently crossed over to the Ajit-Pawar faction of the NCP (National Congress Party), a faction aligned with the BJP, has sent the political class in Mumbai city into a tizzy. ‘Baba’ Siddique, the murdered man, was shot dead on Saturday evening in his own familiar hunting ground, Bandra. Two suspects, one hailing from Haryana and the other from UP, have been detained by the police. It is reported that they belong to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang which originated in Punjab and came to the country’s attention when the gang was accused of killing Sidhu Moosewala, at his own village in Punjab’s Mansa district. Lawrence Bishnoi himself has been lodged in Sabarmati Central jail in Gujarat, from where he orders the killings of intended victims.

One of his targets was the actor, Salman Khan, a flamboyant personality if ever there was one. Politician Siddique was known to be a regular visitor to Salman’s home in Bandra. Some say that that could be one reason for Lawrence targeting Siddique. Whatsoever the reason, the early evening murder of a well-known political figure has stirred up curiosity and also fear among other politicians.

Many politicians in this city have an official security cover provided by the police. Many more will clamour for this largesse after Siddique’s murder. The understaffed police force will be severely strained in performing its allotted role of preventing and detecting crime and keeping order on the streets. To add to their worries, the police were ordered to provide a state funeral to the slain politician. They had done such a job willingly when industrialist Ratan Tata was recently cremated. Soon thereafter, they were told in a written order from the state government’s Home Ministry to provide a ceremonial sendoff to a controversial politician, who had, at times, come into conflict with the law.

Ajit Pawar proclaimed that Siddique was to be one of his star campaigners in the coming elections. There is no doubt that Siddique was popular with Muslim voters in Bandra’s slums. Yet, personally, I am not convinced that even a Baba Siddique would be able to persuade his co-religionists to switch over to a BJP-mentored Mahayuti. The regular lynchings of suspected cattle traders and beef-eaters and the pursuit of Muslim young men in love with Hindu girls (so-called ‘love jihad’) have consolidated the almost-total Muslim vote against the BJP. It would not have been easy for Siddique to breach that wall, even though the community in Bandra owed much to him.

Incidentally, the state government’s decision to give the slain leader a state funeral will open the door for many more such requests. The government needs to firm up its rules for sanctioning such requests. If it decides to be liberal, it will need to create many more jobs in the armed constabulary. The inevitable demand for personal security by politicians will also need to be re-evaluated, lest police stations in the city are further denuded of bodies required for essential duties, as is happening at present.

The elections to the state’s legislative Assembly are going to be close. The Opposition, the MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi), was ahead a couple of months ago. The ‘Ladki Bahin’ project of the Mahayuti, in which many poor women have received a four-months’ lumpsum accretion of Rs 6,000 in their bank accounts this month, with a promise to double the amount if they vote for the Mahayuti, has turned the tide in favour of the ruling party. The gap that existed has now been bridged.

A final piece of advice: Do not bother to watch the exit polls. India’s voters have learnt to bamboozle the pollsters.