By Darpan Singh: On a cold winter day in 2005, young Pooja Pal was waiting for her husband, Raju Pal, at their home in Allahabad (now Prayagraj). The newlywed was oblivious to the tragedy that was going to unfold a few kilometres away and change her life forever. A group of sharpshooters was tailing the BSP MLA in his car being driven by his brother-in-law, Umesh Pal. They had a monstrous mandate—not just to kill. They were out to send out a message that wasn’t to be forgotten in a long, long time.
An alarmed Umesh pulled over the Tata Qualis. Those behind shattered the January quiet by raining countless bullets from their assault rifles on the vehicle. The whole area reverberated with gunshots. In the melee, some supporters managed to push Raju’s bullet-ridden body in a tempo and drove to a hospital. But the attackers found the tempo after a hot chase and turned the lifeless body into a sieve by firing countless more shots. Umesh survived. Puja had lost her husband, who faced some criminal cases, for barely a few days. Two of his security guards also perished.
It was alleged that the ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) MP from Phulpur near Allahabad, don Atiq Ahmed, had plotted the murder and his brother Ashraf was among those who fired the shots. Atiq had won from Allahabad West five times in a row and when he became a member of Parliament in 2004, he thought Ashraf would easily win the vacated seat in the bypoll. Ashraf did not. BSP’s Raju Pal did, in a pride-wounding victory. How could this have been acceptable?
Pooja was spitting fire. Atiq was close to then-Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav. The don was crucial for the SP’s M-Y (Muslim-Yadav) constituency of voters. His bahubal was also something that the party needed. In 2003, he saw to it that a clutch of MLAs gave its support and propped up an SP government. People had seen images of Mulayam Singh Yadav doing a handshake with Atiq’s Great Dane Bruno. He was also reportedly part of the mob that had tried to assault BSP’s Mayawati. The UP government also unsuccessfully moved court to oppose the plea for a CBI probe into Raju Pal’s murder.
Atiq’s stronghold, Allahabad West, needed another bypoll. Mayawati came to ground zero and said Pooja would contest the election from the BSP. Anyone trying to harm her wouldn’t be spared, she thundered. Puja lost but got substantial support. And that was just the beginning. In 2007, she defeated Ashraf. And in 2012, Atiq didn’t want to take chances and took her on. He too lost. The don thereafter never won any election, including parliamentary polls, even though he chose seats outside of Prayagraj.
Cut to 2019. Pooja Pal joined the SP, the same party she had accused of sheltering Atiq. What had changed?
Most crucially, the BSP had expelled Pooja, then the party’s Allahabad chief, the year before. But why did the party end 13 years of association with a woman who had emerged as a firebrand leader after her husband’s brutal killing?
The BSP suspected that Pooja wanted to join the BJP. Reports of her meeting with Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya of the BJP had gone viral in the run-up to the 2017 UP election. After her 2017 loss to saffron party candidate Sidharth Nath Singh, perhaps she didn’t see a bright future in the BSP. This was when many believed the BJP, under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in UP and PM Narendra Modi at the Centre, was here to stay.
However, Pooja’s joining the BJP didn’t materialise. And the reasons the BSP gave for the expulsion didn’t quite cut in. It said after the 2017 UP polls, she didn’t work for the BSP or take part in its programmes in her area and didn’t pick up calls from party workers. The BSP said Mayawati herself took the decision for Pooja’s “indiscipline”.
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No matter how bizarre it might have sounded, the Samajwadi Party was the only option left for Pooja. And, naturally, there was some rationalisation. For one, Mulayam’s son, Akhilesh Yadav, was in charge of the party and he didn’t like criminal politicians who had found patronage during his father’s time.
In 2012 itself, when Akhilesh became CM but Mulayam still controlled the party, the son had blocked Western UP’s history-sheeter DP Yadav’s entry into the party and promised a clean-up. What was more relevant to Pooja was this: In 2017, Mulayam gave Atiq the party ticket to contest from Kanpur Cantt but the don had to withdraw when Akhilesh threatened to cancel his candidature.
And this found mention when she joined the SP. “My values are similar to those of Akhilesh Yadav. He also doesn’t like criminals. He knows the pain of women. The SP didn’t give the party ticket to Atiq,” she had said. She apparently swallowed many bitter pills, including perhaps old newspaper pictures of Atiq giving a speech and Akhilesh looking at him with a broad smile.
But what about Mayawati? “I was pure gold, I always treated her like my mother but she couldn’t value me. I had met the Deputy CM in connection with the Raju Pal murder case. The meeting was not a precursor to my joining the BJP. Though I had the offer to join the BJP, I said no,” she recently said.
So, how has it been with the SP? During the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the SP, under Akhilesh Yadav, fielded Pooja from Unnao but later cancelled the ticket because of “technical problems in her documents.” Actually, the party needed a Brahmin face and fielded gangster-turned-politician Arun Shankar Shukla, alias Anna Maharaj, to take on the BJP’s Sakshi Maharaj. However, this was compensated when the SP fielded her during the 2022 UP polls. And she won.
Be that as it may, it’s not just Pooja who joined the SP. Her brother, Umesh Pal, also quit the BSP in 2019. He, however, joined the BJP first. He said he was impressed by PM Modi’s policies and that the BSP doesn’t walk its talk. In the run-up to the 2022 UP polls, he, too, joined the SP but he didn’t get the election ticket for the Phaphamau seat in Prayagraj and returned to the BJP.
Postscript: In February, when both Atiq and Ashraf were in jail, Umesh Pal and his security guard were shot dead, allegedly by a group led by the don’s son, Asad. Early this month, Atiq and Ashraf were shot dead by a group of attackers in front of live television cameras while under police custody. This was two days after Asad was killed in a police encounter. Today, Pooja is an SP MLA from Chail in UP’s Kaushambi district. And the BSP is yet to expel Atiq’s wife, Shaista Parveen, wanted in connection with the Umesh Pal murder case, who joined Mayawati’s party early this year.
