With Bihar’s cooperatives minister Ramanand Singh of the BJP battling charges of being an absconder from the courts for the past 16 years, the main Opposition party RJD’s growing clamour has turned the issue politically embarrassing for the Nitish Kumar government.
On Wednesday, top RJD leaders met governor Devanand Konwar and submitted a memorandum urging him to ask the JD(U)-BJP coalition government to immediately drop Singh from the cabinet for the “criminal act of defying the law” since 1994 and delivering a communally provocative speech days after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992.
Singh, a leading BJP figure in Bihar, was arrested for delivering a patently anti-Muslim speech at Madanpur in Aurangabad district on December 17, 1992. He was released from jail on bail but continuously refused to appear for trial, which led a court in Aurangabad to reportedly declare him an absconder in 1994. Leader of the Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who led the RJD delegation to the governor, said Singh had “cheap intentions” behind his speech in which he had told a crowd that all the mosques in India would be pulled down like the Babri Masjid if a mosque was built at Lord Ram’s birthplace.
Singh had also claimed in the same speech that the Grand Trunk Road was built by Ashoka and not Shershah Suri, said Siddiqui.
While the BJP in Bihar is still readying to tackle this bolt from the unexpected Babri Masjid issue, the CM’s statements on the reported charges have led the RJD to claim that Singh was inducted in the cabinet to appease the RSS, the BJP and the Bajrang Dal.