Asserting that the Bihar assembly polls will have a "national impact", the Congress on Thursday unveiled a 42-page 'charge-sheet' against the Nitish Kumar government, alleging that 20 years of NDA rule have wrought "destruction" upon the state.
The booklet, evocatively titled 'Bees Saal Vinaash Kaal', was released at the historical Sadaqat Ashram in Patna, the Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee headquarters, in the presence of top party leaders, including AICC national general secretary Jairam Ramesh and former chief ministers of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, Ashok Gehlot and Bhupesh Singh Baghel, respectively.
Speaking to reporters on the occasion, Ramesh alleged that corruption was rampant in the NDA government, which was "run through remote control from outside Bihar... Delhi and Nagpur (RSS headquarters)".
"This so-called double engine feeds on spoils of power (sattaa ki malaai)," alleged the Rajya Sabha MP who claimed that "Bihar has moved backwards, in the last 20 years, in health, education, employment generation and all other markers of growth while corruption and crime were on the rise".
"We do take into account that the 20 years have brief interludes of 'palti' (flip)," quipped Ramesh, in an obvious dig at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the JD(U) president who has aligned with the RJD-Congress combine twice in the last one decade.
Ramesh also alleged that the BJP, which rules the Centre, has been "opposed" to social justice and had a role in litigation challenging the caste survey in Bihar.
"Despite Nitish Kumar's return to the NDA, the hike in quotas for weaker sections, which got quashed by the Patna High Court, was not put in the ninth schedule of the Constitution. When reservations were raised to 69 per cent, these got protected against judicial intervention as the government headed by then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, with former Congress president Sitaram Kesri as the minister for social welfare, had put the legislation in the ninth schedule," said Ramesh.
Speaking about the reservation issue at a press conference here along with senior party leaders Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Ramesh said, "Despite the BJP's opposition, the Mahagathbandhan government got a caste survey done. You can see Bihar's history -- the RSS made Karpoori Thakur's government fall in 1979 on the issue of reservation and in 1990, the BJP made the V P Singh government fall on the issue of reservation."
"In Bihar, the Mahagathbandhan government, before the volte face (of Nitish Kumar), got the caste survey done, while the BJP opposed it. Senior Congress leaders at the national level, leaders of opposition Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi demanded a caste census and pointed out that in order to achieve the social justice that the Constitution talks about, it is important to get a caste census done," he said.
A caste survey was conducted in Bihar and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) even filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court against a nationwide caste census, Ramesh said.
He said a notification for 65 per cent reservation was issued. It was challenged in the high court and the matter is now pending in the Supreme Court.
"I want to ask the chief minister, who is the chief minister only in name and is a remote-controlled chief minister, and the remote controller, why did you not put the (Bihar reservation) law in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution," the Congress leader said.
Ramesh pointed out that under the P V Narasimha Rao government in 1994, the law protecting 69 per cent reservation in Tamil Nadu was included in the Ninth Schedule.
He accused the Centre and the Bihar government of not making efforts to include the Bihar reservation law in the Ninth Schedule.
"This election is not national but of Assembly but it will have a national impact. This is an election for the future of Bihar. All sections of the society want freedom from 20 years of jumla (rhetoric)," Ramesh said.
The Congress leaders, however, did not speak on seat-sharing arrangements in the INDIA bloc, which includes, besides Congress and RJD, the Left and a few other smaller parties.
"We are in talks with our alliance partners on a regular basis. We are going to meet again today. In a few days, we will make everything public. We will also come up with our manifesto," said Rajesh Kumar, the Bihar Congress president, who was present at the press conference.
Baghel described the NDA government in Bihar as "a double engine of which the pistons have given way and his, hence, emitting a lot of smoke".
Gehlot questioned the efficacy of the much-hyped Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana launched recently, and alleged that the government in Bihar had failed to take effective measures to ensure a sound healthcare system, unlike the one he ran in Rajasthan.
Bihar will go to polls in two phases on November 6 and 11 and the counting of votes will be taken up on November 14 to decide the fate of the NDA government led by Kumar and the challenge posed by the opposition bloc comprising the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress, among others.
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