Patna, May 19: The message was loud and clear: if you dare to take on Laloo Prasad Yadav or any of his dear ones, you may not last 100 days in office, irrespective of the fact that Bihar is under the near-direct rule of the President.

Two young IAS officers, Chandrakant Kumar Anil and K.K. Pathak, district magistrates of Siwan and Gopalganj respectively, who won nationwide appreciation for achieving the impossible in Bihar, were today ordered to cool their heels in Patna. They served as collectors for 98 days each but unleashed a storm in the state.

The decision ? taken by Governor Buta Singh, the Congress veteran who has been calling the shots in Bihar since March 7 ? is being seen as a punishment meted out to the two officers for daring to rub the RJD president the wrong way.

Chief secretary K.A.H. Subramanian, however, ascribed the transfers to “personal reasons” advanced by both officers. “Anil’s wife Shobha Ohatker, a senior IPS officer, would soon be going to Maharashtra on deputation. Anil’s request for a similar deputation is in the final stage. Pathak had requested for being brought to Patna on health grounds,” the chief secretary, due to retire on May 31, said.

“The government suddenly appears so considerate to accede to personal requests made by its officers. Anil could have been easily allowed to wait till his deputation was formally cleared and to the best of my knowledge, Pathak is a hale and hearty man. We will wait to see if personal requests of other officers would be so keenly accepted from now on,” a middle-rung IAS officer said.

The act ? viewed by Laloo Prasad’s opponents as “inevitable” because enforcement of the rule of law does not “fit into his (Laloo’s) anarchic scheme of things” ? came in for all-round criticism. Anil had opened a frontal attack on Siwan MP Mohammad Shahabuddin while Pathak had taken on Laloo Prasad’s brother-in-law and Gopalganj MP Sadhu Yadav. Both politicians, externed from the districts by the IAS officers as they were seen as a threat to the region’s tranquillity, have been known for their high-handed ways and their names spell raw terror in many a heart in Bihar.

The two district magistrates were posted on the orders of the Election Commission, a constitutional body already belittled by Laloo Prasad. But, perhaps for the first time in decades, Anil and Pathak ensured totally trouble-free elections in the RJD’s den.

The BJP and the CPI-ML launched a attack on the governor for “letting Laloo Prasad call the shots” even under President’s rule.

“It is a warning to all upright bureaucrats. They must never exceed the limits set by those who ruined Bihar. They must never dare to take on the high and the mighty,” BJP vice-president Sushil Kumar Modi said.