Omar Rashid 
New Delhi: The Samajwadi Party (SP) has alleged that the Uttar Pradesh police were lodging false cases against its key office-bearers and workers in Ayodhya to deter them from campaigning for the upcoming bypoll election in Milkipur assembly seat. The Wire accessed seven of these criminal cases and found that all of them were based on almost identical allegations of assault and intimidation.
Senior leader Awadhesh Prasad vacated the Milkipur assembly seat, which he had won in 2022, after he was elected the as the MP from Faizabad Lok Sabha constituency in 2024. The historic win of the Opposition party dealt a crushing blow to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP’s) campaign of marketing the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya as public approval of its Hindutva ideology. Milkipur is one of the assembly constituencies which falls under the Faizabad Lok Sabha seat, making it of immense political value ahead of the upcoming elections in other states as well as the 2027 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.
In November 2024, the BJP and its allies won seven out of the nine seats in by-poll elections, avenging its defeat in the general elections. This included a shocking one-sided contest in Muslim-concentrated Kundarki constituency in Moradabad where the Opposition demanded a repoll following large-scale complaints of communally-targeted voter suppression. The Opposition alleged the misuse of administrative power by the government on voting day.
Now, ahead of the bypoll in Milkipur, the SP has written to the Election Commission demanding the removal of the station house officers of three police stations in Milkipur, accusing them of lodging fake FIRs against more than a dozen of its members associated with the election campaign.
In a memorandum to the chief election officer of Uttar Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh SP president Shyam Lal Pal said that since the election was declared on January 7, more than a dozen SP workers, sector in-charges, village headmen and other office-bearers were slapped with criminal cases based on fabricated charges. This was being done to “frighten them,” and deter them from campaigning and voting, alleged Shyam Lal. “Fair elections are not possible,” he said.
Shyam Lal demanded that the SHOs of Inayat Nagar, Kumarganj and Khandasa police stations, Devendra Pandey, Amarjeet Singh and Sandeep Singh, respectively, be transferred out of the district immediately. He also demanded that the FIRs lodged against the SP workers and members be quashed, so that an “independent and impartial” election can take place “without any fear.”
Those SP members booked in criminal cases since January 7 included its district general secretary Bhaktiyar Ahmad, district secretary Ram Bahadur Yadav, block president Ram Tej Yadav, gram pradhan representative Mohammad Raees Ahmad, Milkpur development block general secretary Kanshiram Pal, former pradhan Purshottam Das Patwa and his sons, gram pradhans Lalu Yadav, Ram Lahu Yadav and Hidesh Yadav, who is also a booth in-charge.
More than half-a-dozen FIRs in the three police stations seen by The Wire from January 9 to present, showed they were lodged on similar charges and identical allegations. On January 16, an FIR was lodged against SP’s district general secretary Bakhtiyar at the Inayat Nagar police station on the allegations that he abused, beat up and threatened to kill a person named Idrees. In his complaint, Idrees, allegedly linked to the saffron party, acknowledged that he had a long-running dispute with his neighbour Bakhtiyar and they often got into verbal spats.
On January 15, at around 7 am, Idrees said he was going to relieve himself when he bumped into Bakhtiyar, who allegedly started abusing him. “When I asked him why he was abusing me, he said, ‘You are trying to become a leader. You instigate people against me. Nobody will be able to save you from me. I have contacts even at the top level’,” said Idrees. He alleged that Bakhtiyar, along with another person, kicked, slapped and punched him and also threatened to kill him.
Bakhtiyar was booked for voluntarily causing hurt, attempting to commit culpable homicide, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and criminal intimidation by threatening to cause death or grievous hurt. These offences are covered by Sections 115 (2), 110, 352 and 351 (3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
On January 9, an FIR was lodged at Inayat Nagar against SP member Purshottam Das Patwa and his sons Vikas Patwa, Vishal Patwa and Amit Patwa for illegally and forcibly occupying three tracts of land (a grazing area, a pathway and a forested patch in Mithe Gaon village). The Patwas were booked for intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, criminal intimidation by threatening to cause death or grievous hurt and under Section 3 of The Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984.
The complaint against them was lodged by the village headman Anil Singh, who accused them of being “land mafia” and obstructing his efforts to implement government schemes on the ground for the development of the gram sabha. “Whenever I asked them to evict themselves from the land, they abused me and threatened to kill me,” said Singh.
Another FIR was lodged at Inayat Nagar on January 9 against SP’s Ram Bahadur Yadav for allegedly causing hurt to one Vikas Chandra Yadav by demolishing a wall on the side of a road. Vikas Chandra alleged that he suffered a “slight injury” in the incident which happened when he was returning home at 3 pm on the said day. When he objected to the wall falling over him, he alleged that Ram Bahadur and his sons Arjun, Vishnu and Lakshman abused him, assaulted him with kicks and punches and threatened to kill him.
On January 11, an FIR was lodged against Raees, the representative of the village headman of Khajuri Mirzapur, on the charges of abusing the complainant Durga Prasad Pandey and his minor daughter and then beating Pandey with sticks, causing him a head injury. Raees was booked for attempting to commit culpable homicide and criminal intimidation that involves a threat to cause death or grievous hurt, among others. The incident allegedly took place at 3 pm near the crossing of Shekhanpur village when Pandey was going to work.
On the same day, January 11, another FIR was lodged at Inayat Nagar against SP-linked village headman Lalu and another person Rajesh Kumar for barging into the house of a person Ram Singh and beating him up. Ram Sigh had a dispute with one Vasudev since 2019 and it was alleged that the two accused were accompanying Vasudev during the incident. Lalu and Rajesh Kumar were also accused of threatening to kill Ram Singh.
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On January 15, an FIR was lodged under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 and relevant sections of the BNS after a Dalit man accused the village head of Narendra Bhada gaon and SP member Kanshiram of using casteist slurs against him and assaulting him. The case was lodged at Kumarganj police station.
The complainant Durgesh Kumar Pasi alleged that he was returning home after delivering shuttering material, when Kanshiram confronted him and used casteist slurs against him. Pasi said that he had an old dispute with two men over a drain running near his house in which Kanshiram had intervened. He alleged that Kanshiram kicked and punched him and also threatened to kill him, following which he dialled 112 to call emergency police help.
On January 16, an FIR was lodged at Khandasa police station against Ram Lahu Yadav and Rakesh Kumar on the allegations of assaulting one Rohit Kumar with sticks, bricks, kicks and punches over “old enmity.” He fainted due to the assault, alleged his father and complainant Raj Narayan in the FIR. The accused persons were booked for attempting to commit culpable homicide and threatening to kill Kumar.
Amit Prasad, the brother of SP candidate Ajit Prasad, who had filed nomination as the substitute candidate of the party, said that the FIRs were lodged to create fear among his colleagues. But he expressed hope that it would not deter the SP worker. “This is to break our morale. But it’s not like we only have a handful of workers,” he said, talking about the party’s organizational strength in Milkipur.
On January 17, SP president Akhilesh Yadav in a post on X urged the Election Commission to take cognisance of the “appointment of biased officers of the BJP government” in Milkipur and conduct the elections under its strict supervision.