Patna: As the two-year-old Nitish Kumar-led NDA government strives to keep a grip over the administration, its popularity will be put to test in the Bikramganj Parliamentary seat, where a by-election is due on December 29.
The NDA has not lost a single by-election since coming to power in November 2005, winning Bhagalpur and Nalanda Parliamentary and Hilsa and Patna Assembly seats.
The common adversary of the alliance partners, Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's RJD is ready to put up a stiff challenge. Recently, Lalu held a rally where he gave a call for the ouster of the Nitish government. Although the RJD rally, for which the party had booked 35 special trains got into a controversy following charges of misuse of railway resources for a party event, the message from Lalu was clear: the RJD is ready to take on NDA.
There has already been a spat between Lalu and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Both accused each other of violating the spirit of federalism.
Kumar went to the extent of writing to the Prime Minister asking him to restrain Lalu and RJD ministers for their "unwarranted" criticism of the state government. Lalu shot back alleging that the Chief Minister was acting against the federal set up by delaying land acquisition for railway projects.
The Chief Minister drew flak from the opposition for his Mauritius sojourn while the state reeled under one of the worst floods. The floods claimed over a thousand lives, and lakhs of people still need financial assistance.
As one of the most significant judgements of the year, 14 people accused of slaughtering 116 Muslims at a Bhagalpur village in 1989 were brought to justice with the court handing down life imprisonment to them.
The tragedy surfaced 44 days after the massacre took place on October 27, 1989, when vultures hovering over a cauliflower plantation gave away to the closely guarded secret of the Logain village – a mass grave.
The vegetable field was dug up and 116 putrefied bodies were exhumed and reinterred after autopsy.
The Nitish Kumar government paid compensation each to the families of 128 people killed during the Bhagalpur communal riots. The families included the ones which had been denied ex-gratia because the bodies of their relatives were never recovered.
The state also saw a string of incidents of instant justice. None was more horrifying than the bludgeoning to death of 10 suspected thieves at Dhelpurwa village in Vaishali district, near the Rajapakar police station, on September 13.
Although the government swiftly ordered a CID probe, dignity was denied to the victims, all belonging to nomadic Nat community: District officials entrusted with cremating them threw away their half-burnt bodies into the Ganga.
The ugly face of mob violence was in evidence again when, in a shocking reminder of the infamous Bhagalpur blindings of criminals in the 1980s, the eyes of three youths were gouged out for snatching a motorcycle at Sirdala in Nawada district on September 10.
A day later, two child labourers were paraded with shaven heads on the streets of Nawada town for stealing a few packets of detergent powder.
Hardly had a week passed when on September 18, a youth was beaten to death on the order of a panchayat head on the charge of stealing idols from a temple at a village in Sitamarhi district. The police said Rakesh had nothing to do with the disappearance of the idols.
Some high and mighty of the land were also convicted this year. Mohammed Shahabuddin, a fourth-term Lok Sabha RJD MP from Siwan, whose name was synonymous with terror in the North Bihar district, was sentenced in four cases, including one of kidnapping and suspected murder.
Another don-turned-politician Anand Mohan, former MP from Sheohar, his wife Lovely Anand, also a former MP from Vaishali, sitting JD(U) MLA from Lalganj Munna Shukla, former State Minister Akhaq Ahmed, former MLA Arun Kumar and two others were convicted in connection with the lynching of Gopalganj district magistrate G Krishnaiah on December 5, 1994.
As part of the government's campaign to root out corruption, cases were filed against 760 officials, 329 of them gazetted officers.
State's former Director General of Police Narayan Mishra and senior IAS officer S S Verma, Secretary of the Minor Irrigation Department, too found themselves in the vigilance net for amassing assets beyond their known sources of income.
RJD boss Lalu Prasad suffered a setback when the Patna High Court ruled as maintainable the Bihar government's appeal against his acquittal by a special CBI court in a disproportionate case. The case goes back to 1990-97 when Lalu was Chief Minister.
Bureau Report
