“March mein mere shasankal ke do varsh poore honge. Mere ab tak ke shasan me, koi danga nahi hua hai (In March I will complete two years in office. In my tenure so far, there have been no riots),” declared Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ajay Singh Bisht, more popularly known as Yogi Adityanath on January 3, 2019.
मार्च में मेरे शासनकाल के दो वर्ष पूरे होंगे। मेरे अब तक के शासन में, कोई दंगा नहीं हुआ है।
— Yogi Adityanath (@myogiadityanath) January 3, 2019
That a far-right Hindutva icon like Yogi Adityanath bragged about such an achievement has some irony attached to it — the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a Hindu fringe group, has been accused of playing a major part in the 2005 riots in Mau, Uttar Pradesh. Even if full-blown riots may not have taken place, there is no denying that Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh has seen more than a fair share of communal violence during his tenure till now.
Exactly a month before Adityanath posted the tweet, violence erupted in Bulandshahr. On December 3, 2018 a group of agitators created a ruckus after allegedly finding carcasses of cows strewn across farms in Mahav village near Bulandshahr. They soon clashed with cops, and things escalated from there. Mob violence ensued as many of the protestors started attacking the police personnel with stones and firearms. Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh succumbed to a bullet injury during this violence.
Communal violence was also witnessed in towns like Shabbirpur, Saharanpur and Kasganj, among others.
In December 2018, Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, Union minister of state for home affairs, told Lok Sabha that in comparison with 2014, the number of incidents of communal violence was 32 per cent higher in 2017 and that 44 people died in such events. Ahir added that there were a total of 195 incidents of communal violence took place in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, in which 44 people died, while 542 others were injured.
According to India Spend data, 2017 in saw six incidents of cow-related violence that left 20 injured and one dead in Uttar Pradesh. In 2018, at least five people were killed in eight such incidents. Additionally, since March 2017, Uttar Pradesh has recorded 69 per cent of the country’s cow violence cases.
Uttar Pradesh, for a long time now, has been a hotbed for crime and communal violence. There is no denying that previous governments — be it the BSP or the SP — did much to keep a check on issues such as these. But the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government has only added more fuel to the fire.
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