Will jailed dons get tickets?

SC ruling will upset plans of many who are in jail and yet keen to contest elections

LUCKNOW: The Supreme Court ruling that a person who is in judicial or police custody cannot contest elections to the assembly or the Lok Sabha is set to affect the poll plans of incarcerated mafiosi in Uttar Pradesh. The order comes when several of the jailed strongmen are reportedly in touch with political parties for the Lok Sabha ticket.

For instance, Atiq Ahmed is said to be keen to contest the parliamentary election from Phoolpur and Om Prakash Srivastava alias Babloo from Faizabad. Many of these musclemen, or bahubalis as they are known in common parlance, have in the past tested the poll waters from the security of the jails and drawn up their strategy there, away from the prying eyes of their rivals.

There have been several instances of mafiosi winning elections from jail. Vote bank considerations have got political parties to give the ticket them, says Manoj Kumar, a social activist. In fact, the assembly election last year saw two dozen candidates try their luck at the hustings while they were still behind bars. While some were fielded by political parties, others entered the fray as independents. Several of them are MLAs now. During the budget session of the assembly in June last year, the MLAs shared their prison experience with other members of the house.

The likes of Mukhtar Ansari and Vijay Mishra urged the then jail minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya to provide better facilities to the people’s representatives lodged in jail. Raghuraj Pratap Singh, who himself was in jail in 2002 and again in 2006, had assured all assistance to the MLAs who are behind bars.

Amarmani Tripathi, the accused in the poetess Madhumita murder case, won the assembly election from jail in 2007. After his conviction, he got his son Aman to contest the polls in 2012.

Contract killer Munna Bajrangi, lodged in the Sultanpur district jail, contested the 2012 assembly election on the Apna Dal ticket from the Madiyahoun assembly seat.

Jitendra Singh Babloo, who was accused of setting afire the house of former UP Congress Committee president Rita Bahuguna Joshi in 2009, contested the Bikapur assembly seat on the Peace Party ticket.

Mafioso Brijesh Singh, considered the terror of Poorvanchal (east UP), contested the Syed Raza assembly seat on the Pragatisheel Manav Samaj Party ticket while he was lodged in Tihar central jail. Though he lost the polls, his archrival Mukhtar Ansari won the Mau assembly seat on the Qaumi Ekta Dal ticket even though he was in Agra jail. Ansari is an accused in the killing of BJP MLA Krishnand Rai.

Earlier, mafioso-turned politician Atiq Ahmed, an accused in the Raju Pal murder case, contested the Allahabad West assembly seat as an Apna Dal nominee. In 2009, he tried his luck in Pratapgarh after he was denied a ticket for Phoolpur which he had won in 2004. Vijay Mishra, an accused in the attack on former minister Nand Gopal Gupta ‘Nandi’, won the Gyanpur assembly seat on the SP ticket.