The Mafia in UP has been a bane of politics in the state. BSP supremo Mayawati had been claiming that she wished to free up of Mafia politics. But the patch-up in the Samajwadi Party (SP) and its alliance with the Congress despite Mulayam Singh Yadav’s opposition has forced her to give opportunism a free rein and jettison her principles. She has given party tickets to sitting MLA and Mafia don-turned politician Mukhtar Ansari, his MLA brother Sibakatullah and son Abbas from eastern UP. The decision goes flat against Mayawati’s chief electoral plan of strengthening law and order in the state. Mukhtar Ansari is now in jail for involvement in the murder of a BJP legislator in 2005. He is currently under CBI scanner.

The Ansari’s had been a bone of contention between Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his uncle Shivpal Yadav. Shivpal with an eye on the Muslim vote bank insisted on a merger of Ansari’s Quami Ekta Dal with the SP. Akhilesh firmly refused to allow it. Akhilesh denied to give tickets to Ansari though he could have garnered considerable Muslim votes for the party in Mau, Ghazipur and Azamgarh. Mayawati has sought an apologia for her decision by saying that Ansari had been misguided and was on the mend. But such a plea is hardly acceptable. It is all the more so as in 2010 BSP had expelled Ansari and suspended him from the BSP legislature party in 1997 for his criminal activities while Mayawati was Chief Minister. No doubt, Mayawati has blundered. Criminalization has thwarted development in UP. Akhilesh’s development agenda has now got a further boost.