The 2007 Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly election was held during April–May 2007. It was held to elect a government for the state of
Uttar Pradesh in
India.
With 166 million people, U.P. is about the size of
France,
Germany, and the
Benelux nations combined. There are 113 million voters, and 403 electoral seats, with an average of a quarter of a million voters in each constituency. The elections were conducted for 403 seats at 110,000 polling stations under very strict guidelines by the autonomous
Election Commission of India. More than 46% of the electorate cast their votes.
A total of 129 parties fielded 2,487 candidates, while 2020 candidates stood as
independents, for the total of 406 seats.
Criminalisation in the U.P. 2007 elections
The number of criminal-politicians participating in the elections have been
growing, particularly because they have been successful in the past. In the
U.P. Assembly elections, 2002,
candidates with criminal records won 206 out of
403 seats in the assembly, i.e. more criminals were elected than regular politicians.[2]
In 2007, the participation by criminals increased significantly. Prior to elections,
74% more criminal politicians were given tickets by the
mainstream parties (Source: UP Election Watch, independent NGO headed by ex-DIG Ishwar P. Dwivedi[3]):
The
Election Commission of India, the autonomous body charged with conducting elections, was facing intense media pressure to check criminalization related irregularities in the electoral process. Extremely strict measures were enforced, bringing in 639 companies of paramilitary forces to prevent musclepower effects. Any deviations from prescribed norms led to candidates being debarred. To help manage the situation, elections were held in seven stages.
At least six candidates campaigned from jails, broadcasting live speeches through illegal mobile phones smuggled into their jail cells while jailors looked the other way.
However, partially owing to the strict measures adopted during elections, only 100 persons with criminal records won the elections (as opposed to 206 in the previous elections). These include the elected Chief Minister
Mayawati, who is facing embezzlement charges stemming from the Rs.175
crore (US$35 million)
Taj Corridor Case, the leader of the opposition
Mulayam Singh Yadav, and other ganglords and hardened criminals (see
Criminal-Politicians below). In many of these instances, opposition campaigners did not feel safe enough to put up a vibrant campaign, and in some situations, the mainstream parties reached alliances with the criminals and did not put up serious competition (e.g.,
Mukhtar Ansari). However, to some extent, these victories may also reflect a perception that these criminal politicians are able to deliver some level of well-being to their communities.
For example, the
Soraon Assembly constituency in
Allahabad district is one where all 11 candidates in the fray had criminal cases pending against them. Here Mohd. Mustaba Siddiqi of the Bahujan Samaj Party (38280 votes, 29.41%) defeated Mohd. Ayub of the
Samajwadi Party (32739/25.15%).[4]
Alleged and convicted criminal-politicians who won
Samajwadi Party
Mukhtar Ansari, (Independent, supported by
Samajwadi Party): won as (Independent) from
Mau, while he was in
Jhansi jail, facing charges in the murder of BJP ganglord-MLA from
Ghazipur, Krishnanand Rai. His brother Afzal Ansari became the
Lok Sabha MP from Ghazipur, after Krishnanand Rai was killed, and is also in jail for the murder, which was apparently executed by the
Munna Bajrangi gang which is known to be close to the Ansari's. Mukhtar is named in 29 criminal cases (the third highest in these elections), but is close to
Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the Samajwadi Party did not put up a candidate against him. He also is said to be close to
Sonia Gandhi's
Indian National Congress party, who put up only a dummy candidate, Gopal, against him; Gopal garnered only three thousand votes and lost his deposit. A large faction of the Mau Congress executive committee members had resigned en masse to protest against choosing such a dummy candidate.
Despite Mukhtar's muscle power however, the
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate Vijay Pratap managed to garner 42% of the vote, and Mukhtar won by seven thousand votes (47%) only[5]
Currently lodged at Gorakhpur Jail, where his case might take a long time to come to trial. He won the
Lakshmipur Constituency seat in
Gorakhpur District by a margin of nearly 20 thousand votes (12%).
Raghuraj Pratap Singh (Independent, supported by Samajwadi Party/Bharatiya Janata Party): alias Raja Bhaiyya, with 35 criminal cases filed against him. Raja Bhaiyya is from the princely family of
Kunda. A skull found in a palace pond allegedly belongs to scooterist Santosh Misra who was guilty of daring to overtake his convoy. He won as an independent from Kunda with an overwhelming margin of 53,000 votes (48%) over Shiv Prakash Mishra of the BSP.
Mukhtar Ansari's eldest brother
Sibakatullah Ansari (Samajwadi Party): won from
Mohammadabad, which used to be the constituency for the slain BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai. Shibakatullah defeated Krishnanand's wife Alka Rai (BJP), who was standing on a platform of seeking justice for the murder of her husband, apparently by the Ansari's
Chandrabhadra Singh alias Sonu (Samajwadi Party), from
Issauli in
Sultanpur district, is accused, along with seven others, in the murder of the gangster-Saint Gyaneshwar in
Allahabad. After Mayawati's accession to power, Chandrabhadra was arrested as one of her first directives
Bahujan Samaj Party
Badshah Singh (BSP): Don from
Maudaha, is facing six criminal charges, including attempted murder, extortion, and kidnapping. Won at
Maudaha by defeating Apni Chiraiya Prajapati of the
Samajwadi Party by a margin of 17 thousand votes (15%). Currently a Minister of State in the Mayawati cabinet.[6]
Anand Sen Yadav, (BSP): Son of BSP gangster
Member of Parliament Mitra Sen Yadav (currently being investigated in the
human trafficking scam along with
Babulal Katara). Anand, who is in Jail facing over 12 cases including murder and extortion,[6] won from Milkipur,[7] and has been appointed Minister of State in the Mayawati cabinet.
Daddan or Daddan Misra (BSP), from Bhinga. According to his election affidavit,[8] Daddan has cases registered under IPC 147, 148, 199, 448, 453, 323, 427, 511;[9]
Jamuna Nishad from
Pipraich (cabinet minister, resigned on 2008-06-08 after being named in the murder of a policeman.[10])
Out of 19 ministers of state in the Mayawati cabinet, eight have violent criminal charges pending against them.[6]
Rashtriya Parivartan Dal
D. P. Yadav, mafia don and erstwhile liquor baron from Western U.P. (Rashtriya Parivartan Dal): Scraped through from
Sahaswan, with a 109-vote margin (0.1%) over the
Samajwadi Party incumbent Omkar Singh[11]
D. P. Yadav's wife
Umlesh Yadav (Rashtriya Parivartan Dal) won more handily from
Bisauli, defeating incumbent Samajwadi Party legislator Yogendra Singh Kunnu with a margin of 13,400 votes (10%).[12][13]
Alleged and convicted criminal-politicians who lost
Rashtriya Lok Dal
Chhotelal Vishwakarma of
Rashtriya Lok Dal, with 24 cases against him,[3] lost from
Gangapur in
Varanasi District. He polled only two thousand votes and lost his deposit. Surendra Singh Patel of the
Samajwadi Party won from this constituency with a lead of ten thousand votes (6%) over Neel Ratan Patel of Apna Dal.
Apna Dal/Bharatiya Janata Party
Pawan Pandey (
Apna Dal, supported by
Bharatiya Janata Party), who has 63 criminal cases pending against him (the highest number of cases pending against any candidate in this election[14]) lost in
Akbarpur, trailing the winner Ram Achal Rajbhar of
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) by nearly twelve thousand votes (13%).
Abhay Singh, a criminal-politician in jail charged with several murder cases against him, fielded his wife Sarita Singh on Apna Dal ticket from
Bikapur seat in
Faizabad district. At one point, he conducted a meeting with the sector-in-charge inside the jail.[15] Abhay Singh has also been accused of making threatening calls to voters from inside the
Faizabad jail. While Sarita Singh polled forty thousand votes, she came third, trailing the winner Jitendra Kumar Bablu Bhaiya (BSP) by 13 thousand votes (8%).
A number of other criminal politicians mentioned in the press, such as the new bandit queen
Seema Parihar, wife of the slain dacoit Nirbhay Gujjar,[16] do not appear on the candidate lists, and may have been removed due to irregularities
in their nomination papers or otherwise.
Election result
Exit polls suggested that the
Bahujan Samaj Party may emerge as the largest party with between 110 and 160 seats; however, it far outstripped this prediction collecting an absolute majority of 206 seats out of a total 403 in the assembly. In contrast,
Samajwadi Party,
Bharatiya Janata Party and the
Indian National Congress were reduced very significantly.
These elections were another major example of the pollsters getting it wrong at Indian Elections. In a similar pattern to the 2004 General Elections. The pollsters overpredicted the votes of the BJP.[17]
The BSP had won 98 seats in the last elections,
but 33 MLAs defected to the
Samajwadi Party in 2003,[19] in a move that may
have been illegal but was permitted by the then speaker
Kesri Nath Tripathi.[20]
Blanked out
In addition, 116 parties fielded candidates but failed to win a seat. The parties
with more than 50 candidates fielded without outcome are:
However, it is likely that some of these parties may have taken away votes
from other groups; e.g.,
Udit Raj's
Indian Justice Party has a good standing
among
Dalits who also constitute an important chunk of the
BSP vote bank.
Rainbow coalition
A characteristic of the BSP win was the amalgamation of
Brahmin votes into the
Dalit dominated party,[21] an approach that has been called the rainbow coalition. This is in contrast to the decades-old trend of exploiting deep-rooted caste divisions in the state between
Dalits,
Upper Castes,
Muslims and different
OBC groups, which tend to vote in blocks.[22]