Noose tightens

Bluff, bluster, and the benign indifference of a Governor to the whole issue are all that Laloo Prasad Yadav is apparently left with to gua...

Bluff, bluster, and the benign indifference of a Governor to the whole issue are all that Laloo Prasad Yadav is apparently left with to guard him against a full-blast fallout from the fodder scam. The long arm of law reaches uncomfortably close home for the Bihar Chief Minister with the arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation of four IAS officers, three of them serving, in the shocking Rs 950-crore scandal involving the State8217;s Animal Husbandry Department. Coming after the raids on the premises of M.K. Kapoor, the Chief Minister8217;s private secretary, the action against officers of known closeness to Yadav is added confirmation of grounds for prosecution of their political master and patron.

The seriousness of the charges against them 8212; criminal conspiracy, forgery, suppression of material evidence etc 8212; does not leave any scope for leniency. More than merely tainted by the scam have also been two of Yadav8217;s Cabinet colleagues and Union Minister Chandradeo Prasad Verma, all of them figuring prominently as accused in the CBI case.

The investigating agency8217;s case for the Governor8217;s sanction for prosecution of the Chief Minister has been strong but it has so far been treated with a casualness bordering on contempt. A.R. Kidwai has not done his august office proud by trotting out arguments against the sanction that can only sound more political than principled to the common man benumbed and bemused by the scale and sordidness of the scam. And, the most absurd of the arguments has been the Governor8217;s claim, made in all seriousness on a special mission to Delhi, that prosecution was inadvisable against a leader of such charisma as Laloo8217;s. Even this plea has now been emphatically rejected by the people of Bihar. The 48-hour State bandh, an unqualified success by all accounts, has been a fitting answer to Kidwai.

The scam has taken the shine off Laloo8217;s long-cultivated image as a man of the people and a messiah of the poor. It is not without reason that the erstwhile allies of the Chief Minister, including the Left that had long been his loudest defender, backed the bandh and that the sponsors of the protest chose to sink their other differences in the struggle for the governor8217;s sanction. They were all sure of the popular response and they have been proved right. Public opinion in the State is plainly in agreement with the judicial view against preferential treatment to the more powerful among the scam accused. A point that calls for prompt gubernatorial note, so that action can ensue that can spare the State prolonged unrest and unavoidable agony on the issue.

It is not only in Patna that the point needs to be noted. The Prime Minister will do wisely and well to recognise that, after all that is now public knowledge, there can be no place for an uncleared Verma in his Council of Ministers. By letting the latter leave the ministry, Gujral will be letting the law take its own course in addition to allowing Yadav to answer the charges in a court of law. Once he is cleared of the charges, he can, of course, be reinducted. To facilitate the CBI8217;s investigations into the scandal of far-reaching implications is not to fetter justice in any way.