Singh: Under fire

Patna, April 26: Bihar Governor Buta Singh?s statement on the need to prolong central rule in the state and horse-trading of legislators has evoked a strong response from the NDA constituents, who have demanded his recall.

The BJP has described the governor?s statement as an affront on the dignity of the MLAs and said he had no business to indicate how long central rule should continue in the state.

?He (Singh) is acting as an agent of the Congress, which wants President?s rule to continue to suit its own ends. The fact is that central rule has hardly made any difference in Bihar,? state BJP president Gopal Narayan Singh said, taking exception to the governor?s contention that communalism was rearing its head in the state.

Janata Dal (United) state president Vijendra Yadav said the Congress wants to continue its rule by proxy through the governor. ?We will petition the President on the governor?s conduct. We will demand that the governor be recalled as he is trying to bamboozle efforts at establishing a popular government in the state,? he added.

The governor?s statement made in Delhi has come on the line of views expressed by Lok Janshakti Party president Ram Vilas Paswan, who has all along supported the continuation of central rule to ?cleanse Bihar of the filth accumulated during the 15 years of Rashtriya Janata Dal rule?.

A senior RJD leader said the governor?s statement on horse-trading was not off the mark because the NDA was trying to win over some legislators of the LJP by all possible means.

A possible merger by two-third of the LJP legislators with some other political party has been projected as one of the ways to break the deadlock in Bihar. NDA leaders have not denied that they were making ?efforts? to form a government in the state.

?We will not give up our attempts to relieve the people of central rule. The governor has no locus standi to suggest the length or desirability of President?s rule in the state. He is behaving in a political and partisan manner,? a JD(U) leader said.

Senior party leader Nitish Kumar?s efforts to convince other political parties to support an NDA government in Bihar have not been successful because Paswan has refused to support any arrangement of which the BJP or the RJD was a part.

But the LJP leader has said a government would soon be formed without specifying how. Laloo Prasad has taken a similar line and said like-minded secular parties and individuals will soon form a government.

With the Assembly kept in suspended animation, legislators have been getting desperate because of the delay in the formation of a government. Some of them have started contesting the governor?s claim that the situation in Bihar has improved after the imposition of central rule.