After HC relief, NDA plans to take on Opp.

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Putting a stay on its July 15 order about referring the probe into the alleged Rs 11,412-crore “treasury scam” in Bihar to the CBI, the Patna High Court on Friday gave a breather to the embattled Nitish Kumar-led JD(U)-BJP government. But the two ruling parties announced plans for state-wide demonstrations against what they called “conspiracy” by the Opposition parties.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Rekha Manharlal Doshit and Justice S.K. Katriar, who heard the state government’s interlocutory petition for two days, stayed their earlier order on examining if the charges faced by the government in connection with the CAG report and in light of the PIL on it merit being referred to the CBI for a probe. The court reserved its order on the state government’s petition seeking modifications of other observations related to the CAG report, but it also stayed its July 15 directive to the CBI director and joint director to be personally present before it on July 26 to decide if the charges of massive financial irregularities in execution of welfare schemes were fit to be referred to the agency for investigation. Bihar advocate general P.K. Sahi said the court’s stay order implied that there would be no CBI probe into the charges of corruption levelled in the PIL filed by advocate Arvind Kumar Sharma. JD(U) Bihar president Vijay Chaudhary and BJP state president Dr C.P. Thakur described the unprecedented ruckus inside the Assembly enacted by legislators of the Opposition parties as a “deliberate conspiracy” to destabilise the NDA government. The two leaders said their parties would burn the “effigies of the Opposition parties like RJD, LJP, Congress and Left” in every district and block headquarters in Bihar on July 24 and 25.
“The Opposition parties had a deliberate conspiracy to destabilise our popular government just before the polls. Our state-wide demonstrations would expose their sinister designs,” said Bihar NDA convenor and health minister Nand Kishore Yadav. The Opposition RJD, freshly aggrieved after severe lathicharge on its protesting youth leaders on Thursday, also announced state-wide agitations on July 25.