Another SP leader in the dock for murder. The victim was a political rival

Charges against Amanmani Tripathi

Amanmani Tripathi is the son of four-time MLA Amarmani Tripathi who, along with his wife Madhumani, is in jail for the murder of a young poetess Madhumita Shukla. He is the Samajwadi Party's candidate from Nautanwa assembly constituency in Maharajganj. He was arrested by the CBI on 26 November in connection with the death of his wife Sara.

Tripathi's is a unique family in UP politics as it is the first time that all the family members are in jail in two different cases of murder. While Amarmani and his wife are serving life term, Amanmani's trial is yet to begin.

Mulayam and Shivpal, who have a strong preference for criminals, had tried to shield Amarmani and persisted with him in the ministry despite the grave charge of murder. Shivpal was instrumental in the decision to field Amanmani from Nautanwa although he is an accused in a kidnapping case too.

Criminalisation afflicts every party

According to the Association for Democratic Reform, nearly half of SP legislators---111 out of 224---had a criminal background. Of the 48 ministers whose affidavits were analysed by the ADR in 2012, 26 were self-declared criminals.

Besides Mehboob Ali, they included Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya from Kunda in Pratapgarh, Vinod Kumar Singh alias Pandit Singh, Arvind Kumar Singh, Manoj Kumar Paras, Ram Karan Arya to name a few. The other notable legislators with criminal background included Gyanpur MLA Vijay Mishra, Bikapur MLA Mitrasen and Ram Veer Singh of Jasrana.

While these criminals lend force the charge that SP is a party of goons, other political parties are not far behind in giving patronage to criminals. In fact in percentage terms the Bharatiya Janata Party had more legislators with criminal background than the SP - 25 out of 47, which is 53%.

In the case of Bahujan Samaj Party, 29 out of 89 legislators have a criminal background, while 13 out of 29 Congress legislators face criminal cases.

That leaves the voters in UP with the bleak prospect of being governed by criminals no matter which dispensation comes to power in the state in 2017. No party wants to let go of criminals even though their presence in the government fosters a criminal-police nexus and compromises governance.

IC Dwivedi, former convener of UP Election Watch and ex-director-general of police of UP, feels that the problem lies with Section 321 of the CrPC which empowers the government to withdraw criminal cases.

"The Supreme Court has said many times that public prosecutors should not function as employees of the government but as members of the court but nobody follows that order. As a result legislators get away even with murder," Dwivedi said.