This is hardly the sort of place where you expect to see Pajeros whizzing past. But this backward township in west UP has not one or two, but at least a dozen of these gleaming SUVs. People here also boast of a new bypass road. New parks and roads are being built and work for laying a new sewer line is on.
Everyone here has just one person to thank for all that — Samajwadi Party (SP) president Mulayam Singh Yadav. He has been an MP from here and is contesting once again. “It’s a VIP seat,” is one statement which echoes endlessly.
Besides the Pajeros, which are the prized possession of a few neo-rich contractors close to the SP, there is another status symbol which people in Mainpuri just love to flaunt - an arms licence. There are 140-odd arms and ammunition shops here and over 24,000 licences. In both these respects, Mainpuri tops the charts in the country!
“Mainpuri has always had a gun culture since the 70s when dacoit Chhavinath Singh was a dreaded name here,” says Dr Vilas Dube (74), who runs a clinic here. The doctor himself has a carbine and a revolver. “But these are just ornamental. I don’t think we can ever use these things,” he says, a tad apologetically.
Mainpuri’s arms shops hit the headlines recently when the young poet-district magistrate (DM) Ministhy S. got more than a hundred of them sealed alleging large-scale irregularities in their records.
This had led to Mulayam making the now-infamous remark: “The DM should get her head examined.” The matter was taken up by the Election Commission and Mulayam was advised restraint.
Interestingly, guns and their licences are as much an election issue here as roads and parks. “A lot of youngsters joined the SP when neta ji [Mulayam] was CM only to get arms licences,” says KC Yadav, a local SP leader. “But this trend was started by the BJP,” he adds hastily. A senior police officer vouched for the fact that the rush for arms licences was fuelled during Rajnath Singh’s tenure as UP CM.
Despite its new-found prosperity and rapid development, Mainpuri remains a poor cousin as compared to neighbouring Etawah, which is Mulayam Singh’s native place. Many will tell you that while Etawah was his janma bhoomi (place of birth), Mainpuri is his karma bhoomi (place of work) as he studied and later became a teacher at the Jain Inter College here.
But the fact remains that Mulayam’s ancestral village Saifai in Etawah is an oasis of prosperity and development in this backward region. It has two international-level stadiums, a mini post-graduate institute of medical sciences, a luxurious PWD guest house and the Amitabh Bachchan Inter College.
People in Mainpuri do boast of its VIP status, it is this exclusivity that is now proving to be its bane. “When Mulayam was CM, there were no power cuts. But ever since Mayawati became CM, we go without power most of the day,” says journalist Saurabh Chaturvedi. However, that’s not an issue in this election. Mulayam is.
