Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar’s cup of legal troubles seems to be brimming over. A complaint case was on Tuesday lodged at a Patna court against Mr Kumar and his former aide R.C.P. Singh, now a Rajya Sabha member from the JD(U), alleging that the latter had filed a “false affidavit” during his nomination for the RS polls with Mr Kumar’s knowledge.
The complaint, lodged at Patna chief judicial magistrate (CJM) S.P. Singh’s court, alleged that Mr R.C.P. Singh, who used to be Mr Kumar’s principal secretary before his election to the RS, had concealed in his affidavit before the Election Commission the fact that a criminal case was pending before him that is punishable with imprisonment for two years or more.
Mr Singh, a 1984-batch IAS officer close and loyal to Mr Kumar for about two decades, prepared the affidavit on June 4 and submitted it along with is nomination papers on June 7. But on June 5, the Patna CJM court had taken cognisance against him and Mr Kumar, among others, in a case related to the alleged Rs 500-crore excise scam alleging that they caused huge revenue loss to the state through irregular and arbitrary allotment of shops and country-made liquor factories. “Complainant Nunu Singh, a former panchayat mukhia of Belhari in Gaya district, has alleged in his complaint that Mr Singh deliberately concealed the pending criminal case against him in his affidavit. This happened in the knowledge of the chief minister, who issued a whip making it compulsory for all JD(U) legislators to vote for Singh in the RS polls,” said Dinu Kumar, the complainant’s lawyer, to this newspaper.