‘Perks’ of caste politics

Aug 22, 2010 - Age Correspondent |

Patna

The race among poll-bound Bihar’s political parties to woo the upper castes in the state has helped a notorious MLA from the ruling JD(U) currently serving a life term for murder to remain the chairman of the Assembly’s Housing Committee for over a year.

Despite its claims of ridding Bihar of the criminal atmosphere prevalent during the RJD regime, the Nitish Kumar government looks unwilling to remove the MLA, Munna Shukla, an upper-caste Bhumihar, from the prestigious Assembly post that has the status of a minister. Mr Kumar’s JD(U)-BJP government, currently busy wooing Bihar’s upper castes, reportedly does not want to annoy the influential social sections by divesting the criminal-turned-politician of the post.
Munna Shukla, whose real name is Vijay Kumar Shukla, is the JD(U) MLA from Lalganj in Vaishali district.
The JD(U) leader is currently lodged in Hajpur jail serving life imprisonment awarded for killing former minister Brij Bihari Prasad in June 1998.
He was also sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 for the murder of dalit IAS officer G. Krishnaiya in 1994, but was later acquitted by the Patna high court.
Shukla has over a dozen criminal cases, including murder, extortion and abduction, running trial in various courts.
Shukla’s continuance as the chairman of the Bihar Vidhan Sabha Aawas Samiti despite his serving a life term first came to light after a newly-launched Patna-based news website, biharkhojkhabar.com, ran a story.

Comments

According to me as Muslim

atif rahman

23 Aug 2010 - 01:09

According to me as Muslim play a vital role in formation of govt. so the Congress Party should give tickets to Muslim candidates as much as possible and in my district. It must give ticket to Mr. Quazi naseem Ekta from Ujiarpur as he has done a lot for upliftment of Minorities...

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/29165" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-437a8fce23903f3aceaf9ea32570c4c9" value="form-437a8fce23903f3aceaf9ea32570c4c9" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="93196785" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>