Uttar Pradesh CM 'will end crime'

By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Delhi

The scale of Mayawati's election success was a surprise

India's first low-caste chief minister, who recently regained power in the key northern state of Uttar Pradesh, says she will wipe out crime and corruption.

Mayawati Kumari told journalists in the capital, Delhi, that strict action would be taken against criminals.

More than half of the ministers in her government are facing criminal cases.

Many of them are charged with serious offences like murder and gang war. Mayawati also faces corruption charges

Corruption and criminalisation of politics are major issues in Uttar Pradesh (UP).

Mayawati caused a major surprise by winning this year's elections in Uttar Pradesh with an overall majority.

She first became chief minister in 1995, creating history by becoming the first low-caste, or Dalit, chief minister to head any of India's state governments.

'Powerful people'

"Our priority is to implement a development-oriented system which is free of injustice, fear and corruption," Ms Mayawati said during her first visit to Delhi since she was sworn in as chief minister a fortnight ago

Critics question her commitment to weed out corruption and criminalisation of politics.

According to UP Election Watch, a civil society alliance working for clean politics and accountable governance, of the 5,940 candidates who contested this year's UP elections, 882 were charged with serious criminal offences.

During her election campaign, Mayawati vowed to end the criminals' hold over politics.

But the Election Watch says 70 of 206 elected legislators from Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) are facing criminal cases and some of them even fought elections from within jails.

BSP's support base mainly comprises poor and backward castes

The electoral rules do not prevent those charged with criminal cases from standing for electoral offices, they only bar those who have been convicted.

Ishwar Dwivedi of the Election Watch, who retired as the head of state police, says it is almost impossible to bring convictions in such cases since these are powerful people with political connections.

"The chief minister's promise to wipe out corruption and criminalisation is a mere slogan," he says.

Mr Dwivedi says, "If the political bosses are corrupt or facing criminal cases, can the bureaucrats who are their subordinates do any thing to weed out corruption or criminalisation?"

But, he says, he would be happy to be proved wrong if Mayawati takes strong decisions and cleans up the state politics.

Priority

Defying all opinion polls which predicted a fractured verdict in the recently-concluded assembly elections, Ms Mayawati led her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to a spectacular victory.

Her traditional support base is in the poor, deprived Dalit (untouchable) caste, but in this elections she successfully wooed the upper-castes too.

Mayawati said in Delhi that she was "ensuring justice for the Dalit and backwards castes would be her priority".

Not wanting to disappoint her high-caste supporters, she said her government would "launch special schemes to improve the lot of the economically backward among them".

She also said her government will review all policies and decisions taken by the former state government which were against the rules or against public interest.

With more than 175 million inhabitants, Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state and has long been its most politically influential.

But it is also one of India's poorest and least developed states.

Caste and religion continue to dominate politics here and there is little spend on education and health.