OPERATION CONVICTION IN UP: FROM ‘MAFIA RAJ’ TO FAST-TRACK JUSTICE

The official metrics are eye-catching. In the first 13 months (July 2023—Aug 2024), UP authorities tallied 50,010 accused convicted in 36,705 cases. By mid-2025 that number swelled to 97,158 convictions since launch.

- TDG NETWORK

Representative image.

Uttar Pradesh has long struggled to “pring its hold over crime,” as Nehru lamented in the 1950s. Indeed, UP politics earned a reputation for the “mafia raj” - a nexus of “bosses” and politicians that routinely “violated every single one of the 511 paragraphs in the criminal code,” in Nehru’s words. To this day, strongmen thrive: roughly one-third of Indian lawmakers have criminal backgrounds. Decades of “goonda raj” saw dacoits and gangsters embedded in local politics, protected by patronage. Against this background, successive UP governments have periodically tried draconian measures - from special anti-terror laws to fast-track courts - to showcase toughness. The newest incarnation is Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's “Operation Conviction”, launched July 1, 2023. It promises “swift justice” by aggressively prosecuting heinous crimes and publicly touting high conviction tallies. But tracing UP’s policing history shows a cautionary tale: forced prosecutions and blockbuster numbers can win headlines - even while masking deeper problems.

POLICING IN UP

Uttar Pradesh's policing crises have political roots. By the 1990s, Bihar-style caste politics intertwined with crime in UP’s countryside, and its cities harbored wealthy extortion mafias. Senior officers recall that political patronage once made it “near impossible to take action” against heavy gangsters. Many ordinary UP voters came to see petty crime fade once goonda godfathers were targeted. As ex-DG B. N. Rai noted, one positive of recent years is that “one good thing... The government has taken action across the board” - rather than selectively protecting certain groups. (To be sure, data experts caution that police-recorded crime can both understate and overstate the real situation, depending on reporting habits.)