Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: In an attempt to try politico-legal cleansing, as they are calling it, Yogi Adityanath government has initiated the process to withdraw 20,000 cases of breach of peace and violation of prohibitory orders against the politicians across party lines in UP by sending a letter to District Magistrates.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on December 22, while participating in a debate on UPCOCA Bill on the floor of the House, had made the light of his government’s intention to would withdraw around 20,000 such cases against politicians.

Actually, the withdrawal would include cases against CM Yogi Adityanath, Deputy CM Keshav Maurya, SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, BJP MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana and BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj and the likes of them.

Interestingly, two days before the CM made the statement on floor of the House and a day before Uttar Pradesh Criminal Law (Composition of Offences and Abatement of Trials) Amendment Bill, 2017 was table in the house, UP government's Law Department had written a letter to Gorakhpur DM asking him to withdraw a 22-year-old case lodged against Yogi Adityanath, Shiv Pratap Shukla, who is now the union minister, Sheetal Pandey, now a BJP MLA and ten others.

Now after the passage of Uttar Pradesh Criminal Law (Composition of Offences and Abatement of Trials) Amendment Bill, 2017 in Assembly, the similar letter has been sent to all the district magistrates across the state asking them to initiate a process to withdraw cases lodged against politicians till December 31, 2015. The cases (20,000) to be withdrawn in the process pertain mainly to those pending in courts under Sections 107 and Section 109 of CrPC.

Notably, prior to this, cases lodged till 2013 were included in the Bill but this period has been extended to December 31, 2015, in the Amended Bill.

The 22- year-old case against CM Yogi, Union Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla, BJP MLA Sheetal Pandey and 10 others which was lodged under Section 188 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) IPC with Pipiganj during Samajwadi Party Government in 1995, will be scrapped soon. The Gorakhpur administration has initiated the process after getting approval from Governor Ram Naik and letter from UP Government in this regard. Then Gorakhnath temple peeth successor Yogi Adityanath along with his supporters were staging sit-in demonstration during Section 144.

“This process will help reduce the unnecessary burden of pendency on courts,” says a noted legal expert. While the political experts feel that it was acceptable to the extent cases related to violation of peace and prohibitory orders against the politicians would be withdrawn but if it would include the crimes of series nature like dacoity, murder, rape, arson, vandalism, rioting and disharmony, the decision was taken by the Yogi government would not send a positive message among the people of the state.