Rabri — Cong on a hot tin roof

NEW DELHI/PATNA, MARCH 20: Pushed to the corner by the BJP and its own state unit over Thursday's Jehanabad massacre, the Congress High C...

NEW DELHI/PATNA, MARCH 20: Pushed to the corner by the BJP and its own state unit over Thursday’s Jehanabad massacre, the Congress High Command has begun to distance itself from the Rabri Devi Government with several senior leaders sending signals that Rabri should step down.

Sushil Kumar Shinde, party’s general secretary in charge of Bihar, told The Indian Express: “We are fighting the BJP and the RJD in Bihar, we are not supporting the Rabri Government.” And leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sharad Pawar said in Mumbai that the Bihar government “does not have the will or ability to govern.”

This was echoed by former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma in Lucknow today when he lambasted Rabri by saying that “no blind support could be given to her government.” And as if all this wasn’t enough, party secretary Anil Shastri said in Allahabad that Rabri Devi should step down immediately on moral grounds. Shinde’s criticism was guarded. “We are totally opposed to the Rabri Government,” he said, addingthat “we cannot implement our moral authority in Bihar because Rabri has her own majority.” Pawar, however, went a step further saying that it didn’t matter if the government had the numbers. “The first responsibility of a Government is to provide peace, law and order, (but if) a Government cannot guarantee even this, then, regardless of its strength in the House (Assembly), it should step down and hand over the reins to those who can deliver the goods.”

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These signals from the High Command have come at a time when the demoralized Bihar unit doesn’t know what to do next.

Their call for a Jehanabad bandh evoked a partial response and at least two senior Congress leaders, the PCC chief and the CLP leader, have offered to resign. Although for the record, CLP leader Ramashray Prasad Singh said he had “apprised the High Command of his sentiments and feelings,” he said he was “quite aggrieved” at the turn of events and hoped that the High Command got proper feedback from Bihar. PCC chief SadanandSingh, too, has “conveyed his feelings” to the Central leadership. He said the party’s proximity to the RJD had made it vulnerable.

We’ll kill Dalits’

The banned Ranabir Sena, the private army of upper-caste landlords, today issued a statement that it would avenge Thursday’s massacre of Bhumihars by killing “over a hundred” Dalits.

Sena spokesman Shamsher Bahadur Singh also said that Laloo and Rabri have shed tears for the Dalits but did not visit Senari village where upper-caste men were killed…landlords are not safe under this government.’

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Rattled by the threat, the state Government has sent five companies of Bihar military police and an SOS to the Centre to deploy 50 companies of the CRPF in the area.