Rediff On The NeT: Laloo calls for mass agitation


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February 12, 1999

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Laloo calls for mass agitation

An angry Laloo Prasad Yadav, president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and husband of dismissed Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi, accused the Centre of having engineered the massacres in Jehanabad district just to get rid of his party's government.

Yadav said the RJD would not take the action lying down, and all activists and "the people of Bihar" would be on the streets from tomorrow to agitate "peacefully" against the Centre's step.

"This is a conspiracy," he said. "The Ranvir Sena's intention was not to kill the poor dalits but to kill our government, to prove that the dalits are not safe in Bihar. Those poor people were killed for no fault of theirs," he said.

Alleging that the private army of landlords is nothing but an extension of the Bajrang Dal, the former chief minister said caste massacres are not a new phenomenon in Bihar.

If massacres and crime are the yardstick for invoking Article 356, Uttar Pradesh and Assam should have been brought under President's rule first, he said.

The Centre's decision has set a bad precedent, he said. It sends the signal that any elected government can be ousted by "organising" serial crimes.

The Centre neither conceded "our repeated requests for rushing additional paramilitary forces" nor did it seek any report from the Bihar government on the situation before taking such drastic action, he claimed.

He said he would go to the people and expose this "well-planned conspiracy" and finish off the BJP-Samata combine in the state.

He challenged the alliance to go to the hustings and prove their strength. "Let them celebrate this maha mahotsav [great festival] today. They are bound to face the music shortly," he said.

Echoing his views, Rabri Devi charged the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition with conspiring to destabilise her duly elected government and imposing President's rule for political expediency.

She too accused the Centre of having engineered the massacres through the outlawed Ranvir Sena.

While the administrative machinery was engaged in catching the assailants of the January 25 massacre in Shankarbigha, the Ranvir Sena struck again to serve the BJP-Samata Party combine's interests, she said.

"But we will fight out the injustice at any cost as the people, particularly the poor, are with us,'' she added.

Almost the entire Cabinet and several RJD legislators were at Rabri Devi's official Anne Road residence. While Laloo Prasad was lying in bed taking a massage for body ache, the doting housewife sat in a chair at his feet as news of the government's dismissal came in.

In an official statement, the party said the dismissal would have the worst consequences on the BJP-led coalition.

RJD spokesman M A A Fatmi said the people of Bihar would not sit silent, but would come out on the streets in protest.

But the BJP denied any political motive for the move. Sushil Modi, leader of the opposition in the Bihar assembly, said the state government's inefficiency was solely to blame for the imposition of President's rule.

Admitting that there had been caste and class wars in Bihar even earlier, Modi said the frequency of the massacres had increased alarmingly. "The Centre had no choice," he said.

But Modi said President's rule is no solution to Bihar's problems and called for an early election.

The Samata Party expressed "great happiness" at the "belated decision" and also demanded an assembly election at the earliest.

Asked if the Centre would be able to get the dismissal ratified in the Rajya Sabha, where the ruling coalition is in a minority, party spokesman Digvijay Singh, MP, said the veils over the faces of different political parties would be lifted at that stage.

In a reference to the Congress, he said that party shed "crocodile tears" on the massacres, but never withdrew its support to the RJD government.

The Congress, meanwhile, refused to react. Spokesman Ajit Jogi said they would form an opinion only after party chief Sonia Gandhi visits Narayanpur -- scene of the latest massacre -- tomorrow.

West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu condemned the decision and described it as undemocratic. In a statement, he said that while there were reports of law-and-order in Bihar worsening, the Centre should have come forward in other ways to tackle the situation.

Observing that the move was the result of factional trouble and internal pressure, Basu also called upon the people to protest.

In Madras, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi condemned the dismissal.

He said the continued killing of dalits by private forces of landlords was atrocious, but the Centre's decision to invoke Article 356 of the Constitution could not be justified.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist-Liberation) also opposed the Centre's decision.

While criticising the Rabri Devi government for failing to protect the dalits, the party said the massacres ought not to have been used as an excuse to impose President's rule. Pressure should have been exerted on Rabri Devi to resign on her own, it said.