Laloo's gimmicks

BY ORCHESTRATING THE public display of mass following and gathering a crowd around the CBI Special Court premises in Ranchi, the RJD chief and former Bihar Chief Minister, Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav, has only confirmed his customary brazen behaviour. The manner in which Mr. Yadav organised his journey from Patna to Ranchi, involving 30 members of the Rabri Devi Cabinet who were part of the cavalcade, and the scenes that were enacted soon after the Special Court remanded him (in a case pertaining to fraudulent withdrawal of funds from the Doraha treasury) to judicial custody, are certainly inimical to the culture demanded of a responsible leader of a political party in a democratic setup. It may be true that members of the political class have converted instances of their being remanded to judicial custody into occasions for protests. But then, those were instances when the case against them was political in nature. And any such protest is indeed within the democratic framework. This certainly is not the context in which Mr. Laloo Yadav was remanded to custody by the CBI Special Court in Ranchi.

Mr. Yadav has been charged with having been party to a conspiracy involving illegal withdrawal of huge sums from the State Government's treasury (in various districts that now constitute the Jharkhand State). And the CBI, after it was directed by the Patna High Court to take over the investigation into the loot of public funds, had found prima facie evidence of Mr. Yadav's involvement in the conspiracy; he was the Chief Minister during one phase of this loot of public funds. And the charges framed by the investigating agency were taken cognisance of by the Special Court. That the cases against him have gone through the due process of law and reached the penultimate stage before the verdict is handed out - some of the cases are in the trial stage - should have led Mr. Yadav to resist any temptation to brazen it out. But then, Mr. Yadav had never shied away from adopting such a course right from the time the multi-crore fodder scam came into the open. As Chief Minister, Mr. Yadav allowed his party's ring leaders to organise lumpen gangs who vandalised Patna airport and managed to prevent the landing of flights there; the endgame then was to stop the CBI official, Mr. U. N. Biswas, who was holding charge of the investigation into the fodder scam, from reaching Patna.

Mr. Yadav did not stop at that. The manner in which he installed his wife, Ms. Rabri Devi, as Chief Minister, just a few minutes before he surrendered before the CBI Special Judge in Patna and was remanded to judicial custody (for custodial interrogation) in September 1997, followed by the agitation orchestrated across the State during which his party leaders (including the MPs, MLAs and even Ministers) indulged in abusing the state and its agencies were instances that must have eroded the people's faith in the democratic institutions. The cavalcade that accompanied Mr. Yadav's ``road march'' from Patna to Ranchi has only contributed to this process even further. It is in this context that one would expect the veterans in the RJD (a whole lot of them still in the party entered public life in the course of their involvement in the crusade launched by Jayaprakash Narayan against corruption in the political echelons) to assert and display their commitment to value-based politics. For, their silence, even at this stage, will only weaken the progressive cause the platform represents in Bihar; the idea of social justice, secularism and democracy is being challenged in the State by the revanchist and backward-looking forces represented by the BJP-Samata combine in Bihar. By associating themselves with such brazen behaviour and standing by Mr. Laloo Yadav in the way they have been, they are only helping the camp on the other side.

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