By dismissing Minister of State for Stamps and Stationary Amar Mani Tripathi in connection with the murder of poet Madhumita Shukla, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has seized the initiative from the Opposition.Mayawati, according to sources, perfectly timed her action to first let the Opposition run for Tripathi’s scalp. She feared that if she removed him straightaway, the Opposition would embrace him and present him as another upper-caste victim of her highhandedness. After Raja Bhaiyya, a Rajput, no one would have suited the Opposition better than Tripathi, a Brahmin. As in the case of Raja Bhaiyya, she apprehended that the Opposition would readily condone Tripathi’s sins to paint her as anti-upper caste.In the process, she has obliged her coalition partner, the BJP. The BJP would have been the worst loser in such a scenario. By allowing herself to be persuaded by BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu to act against Tripathi and then letting the BJP go to town about it, she has compounded the favour to her junior partner. The BJP was keen on clearing the air before Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee came visiting Lucknow on May 20. Now Vajpayee can visit Lucknow without being haunted by the murder controversy.Quite appropriately, therefore, BJP general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has welcomed Mayawati’s ‘‘initiative’’ and hailed it as ‘‘a step in right direction.’’ By choosing to sack Tripathi rather than affording him the luxury of sending in his papers, Mayawati has sought to send a signal across that she means business. There is a clear attempt to deprive the Opposition of any credit.Given the fact that Tripathi was her Man Friday when she was boosting her numbers in the Assembly by causing defections, Mayawati has take care not to offer his head to anyone else by referring the case to the CBI. She has, in fact, kept an escape route open for him by handing the case to the Crime Branch of the CID, giving it a month to come out with a report. In order to counter the Opposition pressure for a CBI probe, she has cited a request by Madhumita’s family for a CID inquiry.Hope is not lost for Tripathi, who, according to the CM, can be re-instated, if cleared by the probe. Tripathi also seems to have worked overtime as is clear from the U-turn taken by the victim’s family after charging his wife with a hand in the murder.
