Putting up a united face to corner the Nitish Kumar government over the Rs 11,412-crores “treasury scam,” MLAs and MLCs of all the Opposition parties, except the Congress, on Thursday met governor Devanand Kunwar and urged him to impose President’s Rule in Bihar.
About 50 MLAs and MLCs of the RJD, LJP, CPI-ML, CPM, CPI and BSP submitted a memorandum to the governor at the Raj Bhavan in the evening and apprised him of what they described as the “undemocratic and violent behaviour” by the state government towards Opposition members of the legislature during their protests over the past two days.
The MLAs urged governor Devanand Kunwar to dismiss the JD(U)-BJP government and impose President’s Rule in the state.
The Congress, despite fully supportive of the stand taken by the other Opposition parties on the issue of suspension of the MLAs and MLCs during protests inside the House, chose to stay away. “How could we be seen with the RJD, which is a party to this very scam? We will meet the governor separately to put forth our demands,” said Bihar Congress spokesman Premchand Mishra to this newspaper.
Joining the rising chorus for the dismissal of the Nitish Kumar government, Union minister of state for heavy industries, Bharat Singh Solanki, sat on a dharma at the busy Kargil Chwok in Patna along with several Congress leaders and workers.
The Opposition legislators said the government was using the ongoing Monsoon Session of the Assembly “in a deceptive manner” so as to conceal the scam of Rs 11,412 crores as exposed in the CAG report.
They also said in their memorandum that the state government does not want to table the CAG report for 2008-09 in the Assembly because “there is a possibility that it mentions of scam worth a Rs 16,000 crore”.
The memorandum, read out by RJD leader Shakeel Ahmed Khan, also gave a version of the incidents in the House on July 20 and 21.
The governor told the delegation that he should be given a chance to resolve the present political crisis in the state.
“Give me a chance, I'll look into it,” he said.