4 dead in UP police firing, BJP to make it election issue

The Uttar Pradesh BJP has blamed Thursday’s incident, in which four persons were allegedly killed in Ballia district, on the Mulayam Si...

The Uttar Pradesh BJP has blamed Thursday’s incident, in which four persons were allegedly killed in Ballia district, on the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led government, and is set to use the issue to take on the Samajwadi Party in the forthcoming elections.

‘‘The Chief Minister spends most of his time outside the State Capital while his ministers are left without much work to do since a majority of the departments are held by him. The state is operating without a working government, and trigger-happy policemen are killing innocents at will,’’ alleged BJP Legislature Party leader Lalji Tandon.

Tandon was reacting to the police firing on BJP workers at Nagra police station in Ballia district on Thursday. Four persons were killed in the incident and many were injured, official sources said.

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‘‘We are sending a special team to Ballia to probe the circumstances leading to the police firing. A BJP legislator was demonstrating against police excesses and I don’t see any reason why that peaceful protest would have prompted the police to open fire. We demand that a case of murder be lodged against the cops after their immediate dismissal,’’ said Tandon.

The BJP is now preparing a list of police excesses during the regime of the Mulayam government which, it says, will be used to campaign against the government during the upcoming elections.

‘‘It is quite a coincidence but whenever Mulayam assumes power, the police become trigger-happy. We saw police firing on innocent karsewaks in Ayodhya during his regime in 1989, on innocent people at Rampur in 1995 during a protest for a separate hill state, and now we see similar incidents in various parts of the state,’’ said Vijay Pathak, the BJP’s media in-charge.