HVK Archives: Mr. Yadav's exit
Mr. Yadav's exit - The Hindu
Editorial
()
26 July 1997
Title: Mr. Yadav's exit
Author: Editorial
Publication: The Hindu
Date: July 26, 1997
At long last, Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav has resigned as Chief Minister of
Bihar, a post to which he clung throwing all established canons of morality
in public life to the winds and causing immense damage to the democratic
polity in the process. Indeed, Mr. Yadav's position as Chief Minister was
rendered untenable even when the CBI made it known that it possessed
sufficient evidence to prosecute him in the multi-crore fodder seam case.
Even now, he stepped down from the post only after an arrest warrant was
issued against him by the CBI Special court, by itself an unprecedented
situation where a Chief Minister was to be arrested on charges of
corruption and malfeasance. By refusing to see the writing on the wall,
for which he had several occasions in the past few months, and clinging on
to office, Mr. Yadav made history of sorts by creating this unprecedented
situation. Rather than responding in a manner that behoved the high office
he held and submitting himself to the due process of law, Mr. Yadav
resorted to brazen means to cling to the post putting hurdles all the way
in the path of the state investigating agency - the CBI. The means adopted
by Mr. Yadav were not just the legal ones to which he certainly had the
right: what was brazen in the entire episode was that Mr. Yadav had let
loose a lumpen brigade on the CBI right from the stage when the
investigations into the fodder seam began to point to his involvement in
siphoning off of funds from the State's treasury.
It was a rather shameful incident when the Patna airport was raided by
lumpen crowds, who expected the CBI joint Director, Mr. U. N. Biswas, to
land soon after the CBI team had interrogated Mr. Yadav in the case. This
was not an isolated incident: the CBI was forced at a later stage to file
an affidavit stating that there was no way its officers could act against
Mr. Yadav until they were guaranteed protection to their lives. It was
simply a case where Mr. Yadav abdicated his responsibility as Chief
Minister and as if this was not sufficiently outrageous, he went about
stoking passions accusing the CBI of being a party to a conspiracy hatched
against his Government; in this game, he resorted to fanning casteist
sentiments across the State. All the while, Mr. Yadav made full use of his
position as Chief Minister not in the least bothered about the consequences
his actions were going to have for the legitimacy of the democratic set-up.
In the course of his attempts to brazen it out and prove his majority
support on the floor of the Assembly, he went to the extent of utilising
his authority to spell out a policy decision offering Cabinet rank status
to the leaders of the Jharkhand Development Authority; this he did on the
eve of seeking the confidence of the House, after he broke away from the
Janata Dal to form his own Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
Even while stepping down, which he did only when his arrest had become
imminent, Mr. Yadav seems to have shown his scant regard for democratic
values by ensuring the "election" of his wife, Ms. Rabri Devi, as Chief
Minister. While none could dispute the right of the RJD - ruling party in
the State - to decide who its leader must be (and it appears that Ms. Devi
was elected at a meeting of the RJD's legislature party), the decision
certainly is reflective of the contempt Mr. Yadav has for democratic
functioning within his party. Indeed, the RJD itself was a product of such
a culture that is absolutely inimical and even antithetical to the
democratic spirit. By foisting his wife as Chief Minister at a time when
his arrest was imminent, Mr. Yadav is seeking to rule the State by proxy
and keep control of the administration. One would expect those in the RJD
to see the dangers involved in this game, not only to themselves and their
political future but to the State's polity, and resist such moves at least
now.
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