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Rabri Devi dismissed, Bihar assembly placed under suspended animation

Bihar was tonight placed under President's rule with the dismissal of the 18-month-old Rabri Devi government.

President K R Narayanan, who signed the proclamation under Article 356 at 1935 hours in Calcutta, kept the 325-member state assembly in suspended animation. This is the seventh time that Bihar has been brought under central rule.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Pramod Mahajan, who made the announcement, said the Cabinet in its communication to the President had reiterated its earlier recommendation of September 22, 1998 ''that President's rule should be imposed by invoking Article 356 and keeping the state assembly under suspended animation.''

Justifying the the imposition of central rule in Bihar, he said, ''it has brought to an end a rule which gave Bihar 5,000 murders, 1,000 rapes, 2,500 kidnappings and 3,000 dacoities in an year.''

The Cabinet decision recommending President's Rule followed the massacre of 12 dalits at Narayanpur village in Jehanabad district on Wednesday night.

The Union Cabinet met twice in the past 24 hours -- the meetings were chaired by Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani -- to review the law and order situation in the state. Attorney General Soli Sorabjee was invited for both meetings to provide expert legal advice on the issue.

When the Cabinet met for 90 minutes late last night it could not take any final view on invoking Article 356 of the Constitution in the absence of the governor's report on the law and order situation in the state.

Accordingly, Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari, who has strongly favoured dismissal of the Bihar government for its inept handling of law and order several times in the past, submitted his detailed report on the collapse of the state administration, clearing the decks for the imposition of central rule.

The Cabinet met again this morning at 0800 hours and considered the home ministry note which was circulated among the ministers present. Later, the Cabinet endorsed the governor's view that ''a situation has arisen where a government cannot be carried out.''

Advani conveyed the Cabinet's decision to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who is attending the G-15 summit in Montego Bay, Jamaica, before forwarding it to the President.

The file was sent to the President by a special messenger on an afternoon flight at 1400 hours. By the time the messenger reached Raj Bhavan at 1705 hours, the President had already left the governor's house to attend some functions. He saw the file when he returned to Raj Bhavan at 1935 hours and signed the recommendation. "As soon as the President returned, it took him barely a few minutes to sign the proclamation," Mahajan said.

The assembly, Mahajan added, was placed under suspended animation in line with the Supreme Court judgment in the S R Bommai case which said the recommendation for President's rule has to be ratified by Parliament before the assembly is dissolved.

He said the Cabinet had on September 22 recommended to the President the imposition of central rule in Bihar. But this recommendation was sent back to the Cabinet for reconsideration.

Though the Cabinet felt its recommendation was correct, in deference to the President's wishes, the I&B minister said it did not return the file to Rashtrapati Bhavan.

''In light of the incidents in the state in the past four months, and especially during the last four days, the Cabinet has completed the reconsideration and sent it back to the President,'' Mahajan said.

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government has been under tremendous pressure from its ally, the Samata Party, to dismiss the government immediately. In fact, it was at the behest of Samata Party leaders George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar that the extraordinary Cabinet meeting was convened last night.

Last week, the Centre deputed a four-member official team, headed by Special Secretary, home, R D Kapur, to Jehanabad district where 23 dalits were massacred on January 25 During its visit the team met the chief minister and state government officials and expressed unhappiness over lack of coordination among various government agencies to prevent violence in sensitive areas.

The team also indicted the state government for making no effort to spruce up the intelligence network, which is considered vital to prevent caste clashes. Though the home ministry has sanctioned raising of two additional police battalions, no effort was made by the state government in this direction.

Last year, 10 people were killed and in 1997, at Lakshmanpur Bethe, the worst massacre took place when 62 dalits were gunned down. All the killings were carried out by the Ranvir Sena, a gang supported by upper-caste landlords.

A ministerial team comprising Defence Minister Fernandes, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar and Minister of State Satya Narain Jatiya has left for Narayanpur to review the situation.

The ruling party in Bihar is the Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by Laloo Prasad Yadav, Rabri Devi's husband. The leading Opposition parties are the BJP and the Samata Party, both of which have been demanding Rabri Devi's dismissal for a long time.

Politically, the debate on President's rule was split along party lines. The BJP and the Samata Party urged the President to dismiss Rabri Devi, impose President's rule, and call a fresh election. "The people must be given a chance to elect new leaders because the present set has failed them," said BJP spokesman K L Sharma.

Samata Party spokesman Digvijay Singh accused Rabri Devi of doing nothing despite warnings from the police that the Ranvir Sena was likely to strike again after the January killings. "The fact that this party does not care to apprehend the killers is proved by the fact that the commission probing the January massacre has still not been given an office to work in," he said.

On the other hand, the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha, a coalition of the Samajwadi Party led by Mulayam Singh Yadav and the RJD, insists the killings were a "conspiracy" to oust Rabri Devi. They claimed that the Ranvir Sena is supported by the BJP and the Samata Party, whose members are protecting its leaders and cadres. Mulayam Singh claimed the killings were engineered to give the Centre a reason to dismiss the state government.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist has declared its opposition to the imposition of President's rule. "While we don't support what is happening in the state, nor do we back the Rabri Devi government, as a rule we are opposed to the imposition of President's rule in any circumstance except the most grave," CPI-M general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet told Rediff On The NeT.

Only if a state seeks to secede from the Indian Union or if certain policies harm the nation, such as the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, should state governments be dismissed, he said. "While the killings are deplorable and the state government is responsible, they must be seen in the context of the utter failure of land reforms over the past 50 years," he added.

The Congress appears to be caught in a cleft stick. Yesterday, Sonia Gandhi said Rabri Devi had lost the right to rule while Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi said that "on moral grounds" Rabri Devi should resign. Today, Jogi refused to support or criticise the Union Cabinet's decision to invoke Article 356 in Bihar, saying his party would discuss the matter first.

"In Orissa, J B Patnaik stepped down owning moral responsibility for the killing of Stains and his two sons and the rape of Christian nuns. This is our party's tradition and we can only urge others to follow suit," he said.

Jogi said the party would decide on the matter only after Sonia returns from her visit to Narayanpur tomorrow. Last year, the Congress had backed Rabri Devi against the Centre.

Amberish K Diwanji, UNI

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