With as many as 6,500 cops already sacked and many more to follow, UP Chief Minister Mayawati is going hammer and tongs to restore order and bring down the crime rate here.

The fired cops were recent recruits who were alleged to have been beneficiaries of the previous regime headed by Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, voted out at the state elections in May.

Responding to complaints about "irregularities" in the recruitments, Mayawati ordered a high-level probe that exposed the biggest ever recruitment scam in the history of the state.

Mayawati's Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh told this scribe, "After the inquiry made startling revelations about largescale corruption and gross nepotism in the selections, the chief minister felt it was appropriate to summarily sack the beneficiaries who would have only got down to misusing the uniform to retrieve whatever spent to get the jobs."

"From the day she took over office, the state's badly derailed law and order and lawlessness were on top of her priorities; and the removal of such a large number of cops was also meant to make it loud and clear that she would brook no nonsense particularly in the police force," Singh said.

About 22,000 fresh recruitments were made during the three-and-half-year-long Mulayam Singh regime to different wings of the state police.

Singh did not rule out the possibility of more dismissals over the coming weeks. "So far we have only unearthed part of the racket; since the ongoing probe had so far scrutinised less than one-third of the recruitments, many more were bound to lose jobs," he confirmed.

Together with the constables, Mayawati had also ordered suspension of 12 senior officers belonging to the elite Indian Police Service, who headed the recruitment exercise under their respective jurisdictions.

Of these, one was of the inspector-general rank while there were 9 deputy inspectors generals and two superintendents of police.

Besides, disciplinary proceedings were initiated against 58 officers belonging to the lower Provincial Police Service.

These included 18 officers of the additional SP rank and 40 deputy superintendents of police.