Neta vs Babu in Bihar

The NDA regime has failed to prevent ego clashes between politicians
and officials from erupting into ugly public controversies. It remains
the way it was during Laloo Raj
Anand ST Das
Patna
Tehelka, Sept.16, 2006

When the first session of the Bihar Assembly began after the NDA came
to power in the state nine months ago, Agriculture Minister Narendra
Singh slapped a duty officer at the Assembly gates for asking to see
the minister's identity documents. The subsequent public outrage
forced Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to apologise on behalf of the
errant minister. This act indicated the shape of things to be expected
in the relationship between elected representatives and officials
during the new regime's promised 'sushashan' (good governance).

Similar instances continue to be reported from across the state. So
much so that policemen's clashes with criminals are no longer big news
in Nitish Kumar's Bihar. There have been numerous incidents where MPs,
MLAs and MLCs have got into severe clashes — verbal and physical —
with the police and bureaucrats.

In a marked departure from the bureaucrats' silence during the 15-year
RJD rule, government officials are now voicing their protest but
politicians have hardly acknowledged the fact that they are running
roughshod over the officials. At least 10 such incidents have been
reported during the past nine months, the latest being the scuffle
between Anand Mohan, former MP and Bihar People's Party (BPP) chief,
and Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Kundan Krishnan when
the police prevented Mohan from addressing mediapersons while in
transit under judicial custody at Patna railway station.

Mohan, whose present political status remains obscure amid his claims
of being a member of the ruling Janata Dal (United) and the party's
noncommittal stance on confirming it, earned further notoriety when he
raised his hand at the IPS officer who is widely seen as doing his
best to change Patna's image as a crime capital. Mohan, who has
several criminal cases pending against him, insisted that he be
allowed to address the media. "The police did not allow it for obvious
security reasons at a crowded place like the railway station. But the
leader had no respect for the police's concerns," said a senior police
official. While Mohan secured bail in this assault case, he is still
in jail in connection with his earlier cases.

BJP's Janardan Prasad Sigriwal, the Minister for Art, Culture and
Sports, had a heated exchange with the Saran SP Satyendra Prasad Singh
during which he reportedly used abusive language, some months back.
The verbal exchange occurred when Sigriwal and jdu legislator Ram
Pravesh Rai got into a quarrel over zila panchayat polls and the SP
tried to pacify them. Sigriwal accused the SP of favouring Rai and
lodged a complaint. The SP was shunted from Saran district. A few days
ago, Sigriwal's bodyguard slapped a doctor in the same district.

Not me? Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh

MLAs object to the chief secretary's circular that DMs and SPs would
meet them only on Tuesdays for a fixed period of time
Earlier, senior BJP leader Giriraj Singh slapped a commercial tax
officer in Saran during a party programme. The Saran division, which
has four districts — Saran, Chhapra, Siwan and Laloo's home district
Gopalganj — has high-profile MPs. Laloo represents the Chhapra
constituency while Union Rural Development Minister Prabhunath Singh
is the MP from Maharajganj in Chhapra district, Mohammed Shahabuddin
is the MP from Siwan, and Laloo's brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav is the MP
from Gopalganj.

Umesh Rai, son of independent MLC Janardan Rai, was assaulted by the
then Vaishali District Magistrate (DM) Sanjeev Hans. The matter took a
political turn when Rai, a former district board chairman of Vaishali,
raised the issue in the State Legislative Council on August 8,
demanding action against the DM. Transport Minister Ajit Kumar Singh
had a heated argument with a deputy superintendent of police (DSP) and
a sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Hajipur over a petty issue. The
incident snowballed into a controversy with the Bihar Administrative
Service Association (BASA) lodging its protest.

According to analysts, most of the clashes between public
representatives and government officials have resulted from the uneasy
relationship between legislators and bureaucrats under the new regime.
MLAs are peeved at the way government officials have failed to respond
to their letters seeking information on public matters and at the
circular issued by the chief secretary that DMs and SPs would meet
MLAs only on Tuesdays for a fixed period of time.

During the Assembly's zero-hour on August 10, several angry MLAs
raised this issue. The furore prompted CM Nitish Kumar to assure the
House that his government would ensure that bureaucrats behave
"courteously" with public representatives and respond to their letters
on public matters.

"This is a serious issue and this cannot go on. Bureaucrats must
listen to elected public representatives in a democratic system,"
independent MLA Kishore Kumar Munna, who supports the ruling NDA's
main constituent JD(U), told Tehelka. It was Munna who first raised
the issue in the Assembly and ensured a debate on it when he told the
House that legislators had been removed from the posts of chairman in
the committees of primary schools by an order of the education
department, which had made headmasters the chairmen of such
committees.

Munna said the powers and privileges of the legislators were being
curtailed. He was joined by several MLAs, notably, among them, senior
RJD leader and MLA Ram Chandra Purve, in the legislators' objection to
the letter issued by the chief secretary regarding the meetings on
Tuesdays. "This is quite demoralising for us. Are we supposed to meet
DMs and SPs on a fixed day and within a fixed time slot?" asked Munna.

"Officials posted in districts and the state headquarters do not
respond to MLAs' letters and do not even send acknowledgements. It has
become a norm. Officials are not giving weightage to MLAs any more,"
said Purve. The RJD, in particular, has been vocal in criticising the
Nitish government for giving "unbridled powers" to bureaucrats and
allowing them to "act arbitrarily".

Intervening in the matter in the Assembly, Nitish Kumar said his
government had undertaken several steps to ensure bureaucrats from the
bdo-level to secretary-level interacted with the people and that
separate days had been fixed for such interactions.

Requesting anonymity, a senior bureaucrat told Tehelka: "The chief
secretary's order fixing the day and time period for DMs and SPs to
meet MLAs was issued as per the CM's wishes. It is surprising and very
demoralising again for bureaucrats that the CM is getting cornered by
wily legislators' noises in the Assembly and saying that legislators
have no bar on meeting DMs, SPs or any civil servant any time and any
day. This will hamper supervision of development work in the state and
Bihar's future would be no different from Laloo Raj".

Nitish Kumar, while swinging like a pendulum in the
yet-to-be-corrected political clock of Bihar, mounted an attack,
though obliquely, at the previous RJD government when he said in the
Assembly on August 10: "There has been no precedence, for the past
several years, of bureaucrats responding to the letters of
legislators. I have inherited the same system, but now changes are
being made". The CM also talked about starting orientation courses to
make civil servants more sensitive towards public matters.

The NDA government's defensive attitude can be understood when seen in
light of recent efforts by its arch rivals Ram Vilas Paswan and Laloo
Prasad Yadav to draw political mileage from the worsening relations
between elected leaders and bureaucrats. In his rally on August 9 at
Patna's Gandhi Maidan, Paswan flayed the Nitih government on this
issue while Laloo hardly lets an opportunity go without declaring that
the NDA alliance would not be able to complete its term. More
importantly, Bihar's political circles are getting heated up again
with reports of a fresh friendship between Laloo and Paswan, and the
growing distance between the BJP and the JD(U).