File photo of Akhilesh Yadav in skull cap addressing the reporters after the violence.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is visiting Muzaffarnagar, a week after the communal violence started there which has claimed at least 48 lives and displaced more than 40,000 people. His government has faced considerable flak over a series of riots in the state during his 18-month tenure so far. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also expected to visit Muzaffarnagar on Monday. Congress chief Sonia Gandhi may accompany him.
Here are the latest developments:
The political fallout of the violence has begun to show. Sompal Shastri, former union minister and Samajwadi Party candidate from Baghpat, has refused to contest the 2014 elections, saying he has lost the moral right to do so. Mr Shastri has defeated Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh in the past.
Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, whose government is under fire for its poor handling of the violence, is visiting the riot-hit areas of Muzaffarnagar today.
Two boys were injured in fresh firing on Saturday morning in Muzaffarnagar's Fugana village, one of the worst-hit in the violence that has claimed at least 48 lives so far.
A report by Uttar Pradesh Governor BL Joshi, sent to the Centre, has blamed the Akhilesh government for failing to check the riots, sources have said.
But the 40-year-old chief minister's father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has refuted all charges against the state government. The Samajwadi Party chief, in fact, shifted the blame to the locals, saying mistrust between communities was the reason for the deadly violence in Muzaffarnagar and elsewhere.
"There was no reason for a dispute... One community does not trust the other... they wanted to take each other's lives... this is most dangerous," said Mr Yadav.
The riots were triggered allegedly after a massive meeting of farmers on September 7. The mahapanchayat had been held to demand justice for two Jat brothers who were lynched after they shot a Muslim boy for harassing their sister in the village of Kawwal.
The farmers were attacked as they were returning home, triggering an angry backlash and the army was called in. Clashes then broke out in neighbouring villages on September 8.
Four BJP state legislators, one from the Congress and two from the regional Bharatiya Kisan Union have been booked for stirring communal hatred largely through inflammatory speeches made at the mahapanchayat.
Bharatendra Singh, one of the BJP MLAs, was on Saturday traced to his mother's house in Dehradun. The police, though, failed to arrest him after it couldn't produce an arrest warrant.
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