Oppn "silent" on misdeeds in Bihar: CPI leader

While asserting that Article 356 was not the ideal remedy for bad governance in any State, Mishra told The Indian Express here the Opposition should not have turned a blind eye to the “worst type of financial irregularities” and the “gross violations” of the Constitution in Bihar.

Opposition parties, including the CPI, who had aggressively defended the Rabri Devi Government in the face of the Centre’s moves to dismiss it, should have told Laloo Prasad Yadav’s party to mendits ways all these days, he said, adding, “If the Communists don’t tell him, then who will?”

Mishra is planning to mobilise like-minded parties and individuals, including Ram Vilas Paswan of the Janata Dal, towards organising a people’s movement to oust Laloo Yadav. “I have been doing some loud thinking on this,” he said.

As part of his efforts to build public opinion against Laloo, he has organised a seminar in Patna on October 5 to discuss Article 356 in the specific context of Bihar. Paswan is among those expected to participate.

“I plan to go to the people of Bihar and urge them to oust the worst government in the country,” he said, adding that plans were afoot to prepare a memorandum to the President containing one million signatures.

Mishra’s compulsions are similar to those of Janata Dal leader Ram Vilas Paswan and his party’s State unit, who have adopted an anti-Laloo line as against non-Bihar party leaders like I K Gujral, S R Bommai and S Jaipal Reddy, who objected to the StateGovernment’s dismissal.

In a reference to Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav taking up cudgels on Laloo Yadav’s behalf, he quipped, “We are no less secular than these people. Being secular doesn’t mean overlooking the misdeeds of the Government in Bihar.”

Emphasising that Article 356 should be used as the last resort, the CPI leader found fault with the BJP-led Government for, “not making use of Constitutional provisions to warn the State government if it was not functioning properly.

Without exhausting options, it rushed straight to Article 356, he said. “It jumped the gun; no wonder, Opposition parties took a united stand against dismissal of the government,” he remarked.

Mishra said there were various aspects to the Constitutional provision on state governments’ dismissal. But the debate that it had generated showed political parties’ lack of commitment to an ideology. “Everybody argues according to his convenience,” he said.

For instance, he recalled, Home Minister L K Advani had,in the past, gone on record in Parliament to say that Article 356 should be used as the last resort. “How come now he resorted to it straightaway?” he asked.

Similarly, Laloo Yadav had begun a virulent campaign for the dismissal of the Congress Government in Bihar in the mid-1970s, he said.