“Not some loonies like you who are challenging a constitutional institution and framework,” said the MLA Sanjay Sharma in an open letter to the group of 83 retired IAS, IPS and other All-India service officers.

A BJP MLA has described retired civil servants’ demand for the resignation of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath over the Bulandshahr violence as “politically motivated.”

The people of U.P. would take the decision on removing the CM whose government had an absolute majority. “Not some loonies like you who are challenging a constitutional institution and framework,” said the MLA Sanjay Sharma in an open letter to the group of 83 retired IAS, IPS and other All-India service officers. He taunted them for only noticing two deaths in Bulandshahr, of inspector Subodh Kumar and protestor Sumit. “You can’t see the deaths of 21 gaumatas,” said the MLA from Anupshahr seat in Bulandshahr.

Mr. Sharma told The Hindu that he penned the letter because he “felt sad” at the allegations made by the retired civil servants, whom he accused of trying to fulfil “political ambitions” and fomenting communal strife. He dared them to contest elections if they wanted to participate in politics and said the parties at whose behest they were are allegedly writing the letters would even give them ticket.

The retired civil servants had condemned the killing Subodh Kumar in the Bulandshahr mob violence as “a frightening indicator of the complete collapse of constitutional values” and called the government’s focus on arresting those accused of cow slaughter rather than the culprits behind the mob violence “rule of lawlessness.”

If Mr. Adityanath held malice against Muslims, why would he permit the community to hold a large ijtema in Bulandshahr and entrust the entire administration with conducting it peacefully, Mr. Sharma asked. The previous governments didn’t even allow a Ram Leela to take place in villages.

The legislator also justified the government’s focus on the cow slaughter case. “Those who killed the cows committed a crime in actual terms... the mob was provoked by the killing of gaumata,” he said. Had there been no cow slaughter, the violence would not have taken place, he wrote.

5 more held

Meanwhile, police have arrested five more accused in the mob violence case, one of them after he surrendered in court. This takes the total number of arrests to 24. The main accused, Bajrang Dal activist Yogesh Raj, and a few others are still on the run.

Police have claimed to have cracked the cow slaughter case with the arrest of three persons on charges of shooting the cows and then slaughtering them on the night of December 2.