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Rabri says she will quit

By Our Staff Correspondent

PATNA Oct. 11. The Bihar Chief Minister, Rabri Devi, today expressed anguish over the functioning of her party and Ministers, and expressed her desire to quit after the Lok Sabha elections next year.

Addressing the "open session' at the conclusion of a two-day national council meeting, the Chief Minister, who took over the reins of the party from her husband and Rashtriya Janata Dal president, Laloo Prasad Yadav, in July 1997, maintained that she had been running the party and the Government with the "same honesty with which I looked after my family".

"But I now want to be free of the party and the Government. They both lack willpower. After the Lok Sabha elections, I would like to give up my post and shall not aspire to be either an MP or an MLA," she said. Mrs. Rabri Devi expressed unhappiness over the manner in which the party and the Government were functioning, and the accusations against her and her husband of being nepotistic. "There are accusations that this is a pati-patni ka party (party of wife-husband)."

Warning her Ministers, she said: "If you want to stay, run your Department honestly. Eat just half a roti, but be honest. Ministers have amassed money. Where have they come from, and where are they today? They are simply making money."

Mr. Yadav, however, sought to assuage her feelings and said that power "vests with us" and that he would not give it up at all. "I'll not give a divorce to Rabri Devi," he said making light of the Chief Minister's remarks. He said her outbursts were emotional, pained as she was with the circumstances. He, however, defended the Ministers saying that they had displayed solidarity and stood by him in his "time of tribulation."

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