The Lalu problem


The Railway Minister is engaged in a battle of words over whether his car was pelted or not, again trying to obscure his unforgivable sins with an indignant anti-BJP veneer

What is India News Service
25 April  2005

Is Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav making a song and dance about a stone-pelting event in Gujarat to distract attention from the disintegration of his political career?

Charges have been filed in a Central Bureau of Investigation court against Railway Minister Lalu Yadav in connection with a case relating to the multi crore fodder scam, following an expose in the press, notably by the Indian Express.

A special CBI court framed charges against the Railway Minister in a fodder scam case relating to fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 37 crore from Chaibasa treasury in 1996. The fodder scandal ought to have put paid to Lalu’s political career years ago, but a slow judicial process has helped him continue his political advances while serious charges rot in cold storage.

On Monday, the Rajya Sabha went into turmoil, with the opposition demanding Lalu's scalp. A vociferous National Democratic Alliance is demanding his resignation, following framing of charges against him in a fodder scam case.

Till yesterday, Lalu was engaged in a war of words with the BJP, which he alleges engineered an attack on him when he visited a train accident site in that state.

Lalu was at SSG Hospital at Vadodara, visiting Sabarmati Express accident victims, when his vehicle was allegedly pelted with stones. Gujarat Chief Minister Modi has been under pressure to find out how the attack came about, and the incident has been blown out of all logical proportions into a national issue that deserves prime space discussion.

The BJP, the party Modi belongs to, has been one of Lalu’s biggest bugbears, and he has not been slow in using a tragic accident, which led to 18 deaths and injuries for over a hundred, to score over his rivals.

Following Lalu’s outrage, the Centre was flexing its muscles when the Modi government on Sunday decided to pre-empt Central intervention by appointing a one-man inquiry commission, headed by retired high court judge NB Patel. The judge will probe Lalu’s accusations that a pre-planned conspiracy hatched by the Chief Minister to eliminate him. The report will be out within three months.

But not everyone believes his version of the story. Demanding Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav’s ouster, the BJP accused him of misleading the Prime Minister and the country into believing that he was attacked on his visit to Gujarat by Bajrang Dal and VHP activists.

The BJP’s stance comes in the wake of the Gujarat government’s decision to order a judicial probe into the attack on Laloo. The BJP, armed with video clippings to support its theory, said footage in its possession showed that the car Laloo was travelling in was not damaged. ‘‘The rear windscreen of the minister’s car was intact,’’ party spokesman Arun Jaitley said.

Lalu will appear before a special CBI court in Ranchi on Monday in connection with these cases. This is the first time since his induction into the union cabinet that Lalu will appear in court.

Thirty-nine of the 61 cases had been transferred to Jharkhand after the new state was created in 2000. Yadav is accused in five of the cases. The other accused include former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, four bureaucrats, veterinary doctors and other government officials.

Many describe Laloo (also Lalu) Prasad Yadav as India’s most colourful politician, but that is a compliment the people of Bihar would rather live without. He has ruled the state first as chief minister, and then by proxy through his wife who he made chief minister, for 15 years. He lost power in the state earlier this year, but not before he had gained himself a berth in the union cabinet. Bihar is widely perceived as India’s most backward, corrupt and criminally administered state, thanks to a dispensation that has cared little for its citizenry.

To add to Lalu’s woes, the Bihar police raided the ancestral home of his party colleague and MP Mohammad Shahabuddin, seized arms and ammunition, and arrested three persons.

Conflicting reports have however been received on the number of arms and ammunition seized from the MP’s house. Neither the Siwan district administration nor the police have said anything on the matter.

Police officials said the district administration had been planning to raid Shahabuddin’s palatial house, known as “saheb ka bungalow” in Siwan, for over a week. Shahabuddin is widely known as a Lalu muscleman. A magistrate held a public hearing in Shahabuddin’s village. Police said there were 34 criminal cases against him. A magistrate has said if Shahabuddin is not barred from entering the district, it could create law and order problems.

On Independence day, a youth, Chandan Bhattacharya, self-immolated himself at the gates of the Patna High Court as his father who worked for a state-owned corporation wasn’t paid his salary for ten years. It hit the national headlines. A media campaign, followed by a PIL filed by Kapila Hingorani, resulted in a Supreme Court order asking the Bihar government to pay Rs.50 crores as arrears to the starving employees. More than a thousand have died in penury and for want of medicine. Bihar, already a poor state, lost all of its industrial base, revenue, forest cover and even educational institutions to the new state of Jharkhand. Bihar was left with nothing but floods.

It is high time India, and states like Bihar, got a better class of politician. Lalu may have been the darling of the “secular” alliance, but his misrule over 15 years should have proved by now that he is hardly a fitting answer to the BJP’s Hindutva politics.