Opposition

“Leaders must work on seat sharing in every state. This is a Herculean task and there is little time left. BJP is saying that this alliance has no leader or agenda… we must come up with a clear-cut programme to instill confidence among the people,” he added. At a press conference after a tea party attended by the invitees,banerjee said a fourmember committee comprising the Congress’s Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav, the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Satish Mishra and Aam Aadmi Party national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal will discuss the perceived vulnerability of electronic voting machines (EVMS) to tampering and draft opposition arguments against the machines.

At the rally,former Jammu and & Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah labelled the EVM a “chor machine.”

The BJP on Saturday tried to appear unfazed by the show of Opposition unity. ”Is it a rally of ‘United India’ or of ‘Divided Leadership’?,” the party’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy asked journalists, asserting that the BJP will form the next government under Modi after winning the general election by a landslide. He termed the Kolkata rally a “summit of contradiction and conflicting ideologies”. He also questioned who was leading the opposition’s conclave, ”Is it Mulayam Singh, Akhilesh Yadav, Mamata or who?”

Speakers at the rally including Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, Deve Gowda and Kejriwal said there was no need to speculate on a prospective prime ministerial candidate now and the need of the hour is opposition unity. “Your party has become leaderless,” Banerjee said of the BJP. “Therefore, you have only one Prime Minister and one (party) president. We have a lot of leaders. Collective leadership is the base of our gathbandhan (alliance). We will sit together after the elections to choose the next prime minister.”

“Nation first, individuals next,” said Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

“The elections are going to be the second struggle for Independence,” remarked Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief MK Stalin.

“The purpose of this rally should be to prevent a split in opposition votes,” said Yashwant Sinha. were later shot dead in Aligarh.

Scores of alleged criminals have been killed since Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath launched a “zero-tolerance” fight against criminals after taking office in March 2017.

Top police officers refused to speak on the record, but said on condition of anonymity that they were trying to discourage tactics like “half-encounters”. Such tactics of dealing with alleged criminals seem to be gaining currency, they added. “This… has robbed the crime-fighting efforts of their seriousness. The Uttar Pradesh police are becoming a laughing stock,” said an inspector-general rank officer, who did not wish to be named.

The crackdown on alleged criminals has raised questions particularly since many of them having been killed in an identical fashion in the state’s 24 districts. The police have taken flak for the contents of First Information Reports (FIRS) filed in such cases, their timing and the setting of the “shootouts”. The FIRS have been found to be strikingly similar in all such cases.

NGO Rihai Manch examined the FIRS and took the matter to the NHRC regarding 17 alleged extrajudicial killing cases. Rajeev Yadav, the NGO’S convener, said the circumstances, the settings, and FIRS strengthen suspicions that they were indeed extrajudicial killings. “The half encounters, which are suddenly happening across the state, are staged,’’ he said.

The National Human Rights Commission’s decision in May to investigate 17 killings put the police on the defensive. The Supreme Court, too, agreed on January 14 to examine in detail “on the earliest possible date” a plea seeking a court-monitored probe into the alleged extrajudicial killings.

Officials said district police chiefs became wary after this development and the “full-encounter [extra-judicial killing]” rate dropped in the state. And soon “half-encounters” were resorted to, they added.

“The police leadership is well aware of this fact. It nullifies the well-thought-out strategy of arresting hardened criminals. The police superintendents are being given the necessary guidelines to keep their personnel under check,” said a police officer.

Former police inspector general Vijay Shankar Singh said no matter what the thought process is at the top, the men in the field find “half-encounters” an easy way to appease their bosses. He added that this negated the legal trouble that a “full-encounter” could bring.

A Ghaziabad-based rights activist, Rajiv Sharma, said such “half-encounters” have a high rate because they help prevent an outcry. “Any hardened criminal considers himself lucky to have a bullet in a leg rather than in the head. So, he or his family never challenges a half-encounter. In a half-encounter, the policemen do not face the inquiries that they do in a full-encounter,” he said. “Also such encounters give out the message that police are acting tough.”

Inspector general (Allahabad) Mohit Agarwal insisted the priority is always to arrest alleged criminals without causing any physical harm. “Many times, criminals open fire on policemen, causing a gunfight,’’ he said. “Not only criminals but even policemen have also received injuries in encounters.”

Opposition Samajwadi Party lawmaker, Sunil Singh Sajan, called the “half-encounters” a charade. “Everyone knows encounters are part of the state policy and the chief minister himself has been seen encouraging policemen with the ‘thok do’ [kill them] line.”