And Where is CM Akhilesh Yadav? Is Doling Out Money His Only Role?

NEW DELHI: While the BJP leaders were making a bee-line for Dadri to support the mobs who had turned violent and lynched Mohammad Akhlaq, there was no sign of the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Akhilesh Yadav. Not even when the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal rushed to the spot to offer solace to the bereaved family. Not even when the Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi followed to pay his party’s condolences to the traumatised family that only knew it should leave the village, but had no idea of where to go.

Dadri was clearly too far away for the ruling Samajwadi party family with supremo Mulayam Singh finding refuge in silence, that is as deep as that of PM Modi. He has not uttered a word against the brutal murder of Akhlaq, with his son also staying put in Lucknow. After six days the family, traumatised and grieving, had to travel to Lucknow to meet him. And what did the young CM do? He walked along with them for photographs, increased the compensation to Rs 30 lakhs, and insisted that the security had been beefed up and they should live in their homes.

Of course, what the family did not say but probably thought: if we are attacked again will you be there? And the question is not of the one family getting the security and staying there. The issue is of all the Muslim families who are feeling so insecure, being made to feel that they would be protected. This could have happened only with a visit by the Chief Minister and other leaders of the Samajwadi party, but this did not happen. As a result many have left, and the rest are preparing to leave as no one believes in Mr Akhilesh Yadav’s ability to protect those who need it most.

Significantly Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal was stopped for hours, and prevented from entering the village and meeting the victims by the state authorities. He refused to return and was finally given permission. On the other hand, all the BJP leaders have been allowed free access to the village including Muzaffarnagar accused Sangeet Som who was reported by the media present as stoking communal fires again with his words. But he was not stopped by the CM.

When it was clear to Akhilesh Yadav that the family was too terrified to continue living in their home in the village, he said they could live at his residence in Ghaziabad until they were ready to return. That is hardly a solution, and certainly not seen as one by the family that is looking for foolproof security which the UP government seems incapable or providing, or a permanent solution that again the CM kept out of.

Mulayam Singh, the messiah of secularism, has not uttered a word about the lynching. And seems to have turned invisible since. The Samajwadi party is absent from the streets of Dadri, as it was in Muzaffarnagar when hundreds of terror-struck Muslims fled their villages after the outbreak of violence. Mulayam Singh did not visit the villages and the camps even once. And his son CM Yadav did so only after it was announced that then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi would be flying in to visit the camps and meet the victims. Even then the UP Chief Minister visited just one camp, flew in and even before the local residents knew it had flown out.