March 13, 2012

UTTAR PRADESH ELECTIONS BRING JUMP IN POLITICIANS FACING CRIMINAL CHARGES

[Rival political parties in Uttar Pradesh don’t have clean records, either. Bahujan Samaj Party has 36.3 percent of their elected assembly ministers with criminal cases pending against them, Bharatiya Janata Party has 53.2 percent, and Indian National Congress 46.4 percent, the watchdog group told India Ink.]
Supporters of Samajwadi Party celebrate after the party elected Akhilesh Yadav to be the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, March 10, 2012.
Jitendra Prakash/ReutersSupporters of Samajwadi Party celebrate after the party elected Akhilesh Yadav to be the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, March 10, 2012.
When Akhilesh Yadav brought his political party to power in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, he declared that “no callousness in law and order will be tolerated” in the notoriously crime-infested land.
For Mr. Yadav, 38, that would have to begin in his own backyard.
In the recent state assembly polls, half of the ministers elected from his Samajwadi Party have criminal cases pending against them, a quarter of them for serious crimes like rape and murder, according to data pooled by the Association for Democratic Reforms, a nonpartisan group that works for electoral reforms in India.
Rival political parties in Uttar Pradesh don’t have clean records, either. Bahujan Samaj Party has 36.3 percent of their elected assembly ministers with criminal cases pending against them, Bharatiya Janata Party has 53.2 percent, and Indian National Congress 46.4 percent, the watchdog group told India Ink.
From the five states that held assembly elections last week, Uttar Pradesh had the highest percentage of ministers with pending criminal cases — 143 out of the 403-member legislative assembly. A fifth of those charged have serious criminal cases pending against them, according to National Election Watch, a coalition of hundreds of non-governmental organizations, which analyzed the affidavits of all 690 assembly legislators in the five states that held elections.
Heading the list is Dhirendra Pratap Singh of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh, with 29  criminal cases pending against him. Sushil Kumar of the same political party and also in Uttar Pradesh, is facing 14 criminal cases. However, the ranking changes if only the most serious crimes are analyzed. Topping the list then is Mitra Sen, of the Samajwadi Party, with 36 criminal cases including 14 cases related to murder, the organization notes.
For Akhilesh Yadav, tasked with heading the country’s largest state, there’s a grimmer statistic to contend with. The number of ministers charged with crime is growing. In the last assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, held in 2007, 35 percent of assembly legislators had criminal cases pending against them. This year, that figure has shot up to 47 percent.
[The assailants struck around 11:30 a.m. just as a memorial service for those killed in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province was coming to an end, said Adubl Rahim Ayobi, a member of Parliament from the province. “A few bullets landed in the vicinity of the area where the delegation was sitting,” Mr. Ayobi said in a telephone interview as he made his way back to Kandahar city, the provincial capital. “The security forces repelled the attack and are chasing the insurgents.”]

By Taimoor Shah & Matthew Rosenberg
PANJWAI, Afghanistan — Militants on Tuesday attacked an Afghan government delegation visiting the village where an American soldier is accused of killing 16 people in a door-to-door rampage, puncturing the calm that had largely prevailed in Afghanistan since the slayings. At least one Afghan soldier was killed in Tuesday’s attack, which came two days after the shooting spree that has further stoked the already deep anti-American sentiment in the country.
The assailants struck around 11:30 a.m. just as a memorial service for those killed in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province was coming to an end, said Adubl Rahim Ayobi, a member of Parliament from the province. “A few bullets landed in the vicinity of the area where the delegation was sitting,” Mr. Ayobi said in a telephone interview as he made his way back to Kandahar city, the provincial capital. “The security forces repelled the attack and are chasing the insurgents.”
The delegation included two of President Hamid Karzai’s brothers, Qayoom Karzai and Shah Wali Karzai, along with Gen. Shir Muhammad Karami, the chief of staff of the Afghan Army, and Deputy Interior Ministry Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahman.
Mr. Ayobi described the attackers as “insurgents,” although there was no immediate claim of credit from the Taliban.
During the visit on Tuesday, the delegation paid compensation to the wounded and the families of those killed. Each death was compensated with 100,000 Afghanis, about $2,000 and every person wounded in the attack was given about $1,000. The American government also plans to pay compensation although it is not clear how much or when.
The attack belied the Afghan government’s efforts to present itself as in control of the situation in Kandahar, where anger over Sunday’s killing is perhaps deepest, and the Taliban — whose roots are in the area — have been trying to capitalize on the fallout. In fact, as word of the attack on the delegation spread, the government’s media center in Kandahar initially denied it had taken place, tweeting: “Media! plz don’t publish things which aren’t confirmed, there is no combat, there is no fire, all is well. everything calm and safe.”
Apart from the attack, Afghanistan has largely been calm since Sunday’s killings, leaving unrealized Western fears of a repeat of the unrest that spread across the country last month after the burning of Korans by American soldiers. The only demonstration since Sunday took place Tuesday morning in the city of Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan, where about a 1,000 people burned an effigy of President Obama and blocked a highway for about an hour, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to the Jews.”
They demanded an immediate public trial for the American soldier accused of carrying out the killings and urged President Karzai not to sign a strategic partnership deal with the United States, which is currently being negotiated.
The Taliban has made the same demands. In a vitriolic statement on Tuesday, its third since the killings, it threatened to avenge the killings by beheading any American soldiers captured by the insurgents. “The Islamic Emirate mujahedeen, as the true defenders of our oppressed people, warn the Americans that nothing will content us but avenging every single one of the martyrs, with the help of God, by killing and beheading your sadist soldier in every inch of the country,” said the Taliban, which refers to itself as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
The Taliban have on rare occasions captured American and allied soldiers but most of those seized by the militants have been aid workers and journalists, including two reporters from The New York Times
The Taliban’s statement also claimed the killings had been carried out by more than one American soldier, echoing statements made in recent days by many politicians, religious leaders and ordinary people here.
American officials say the evidence they have so far collected indicates there was only one gunman and that he will be tried though the military justice system.
Taimoor Shah reported from Panjwai, Afghanistan, and Matthew Rosenberg from Kabul. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.