Lucknow: Politically vibrant Uttar Pradesh will ring the curtain down on 2015 after a tug-of-war between Raj Bhawan and Akhilesh Yadav government on Lokayukta issue and the horrific Dadri lynching, even as ruling Samajwadi Party pulled up its socks for Assembly polls a year away.
In the run-up to the 2017 elections, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav sent a strong message that he means business when he carried out a massive reshuffle in his council of ministers dropping non-performers and striking a subtle balance between youth and experience.
The year also saw a festering feud between SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and IG-rank IPS officer Amitabh Thakur, who was suspended after leaking to media the purported telephonic threat meted out to him by the SP patriarch.
The litigation reached the doors of the judiciary, which also hogged the headlines for its rulings on appointment of 1.72 ‘shiksha mitras' (primary teachers), who took the matter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during one of his visits to Varanasi.
Court rulings on suspended NOIDA chief engineer Yadav Singh's movable and immovable properties kept making news all the year round and threatened to become an albatross around the ruling SP's neck.
In the Dadri incident, 50-year-old Ikhlaq was beaten to death and his 22-year-old son Danish critically injured by a 200-strong mob which barged into their house in Bisara village on a September night following rumours that the family had consumed beef.
The matter snowballed into a major political issue as the timing was around Bihar Assembly polls and every party tried to score a brownie point.
The Dadri incident coupled with the killing of Kannada scholar MM Kalburgi triggered a spontaneous outrage from India's intellectuals who have earned recognition, with a string of litterateurs returning their Sahitya Akademi awards, concerned over the silence of the august body over rising intolerance.
It is in this context that President Pranab Mukherjee underlined the need to retain diversity, plurality and tolerance as the core values of Indian civilisation.
Chief Minister Yadav went into an immediate damage control mode and announced a Rs 45 lakh assistance to Ikhlaq's family as embers of communal hatred flew thick and fast.
On the political front the state saw hectic activities in both Samajwadi Party and Opposition Bahujan Samaj Party camps, with both sides holding a series of strategy sessions keeping in mind UP Assembly polls due in early 2017.
