“You are possibly not aware that these agencies are no longer under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). They are now controlled by the Union home ministry. The central government and a section of BJP leaders are behind this. BJP leaders here want the agencies to serve their political agenda.”
~Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal assembly, September 19
“Many parties of the country compromised with the dangai party (party of rioters). But I never succumbed and nor will I ever do; had I succumbed, I would not have probably been in jail for so long.”
~Lalu Prasad Yadav, state council meeting of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, September 21
Scrutinised closely, these statements of two regional satraps provide an insight into the different approaches adopted by the Trinamool Congress chief and her Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) counterpart in dealing with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
There are striking similarities in the situations that Mamata Banerjee and Lalu Prasad Yadav find themselves in today.
The West Bengal chief minister’s nephew Abhishek Banerjee and at least a dozen of her party colleagues are on the radar of various investigating agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the income tax (IT) department. According to Arun Shrivastav, the Kolkata-based former bureau chief of the Indian Express, Banerjee is “desperately” trying to rescue these leaders. “She is trying to buy peace with the PM,” he said.
The CBI has petitioned a special court in Delhi to cancel the bail of Lalu’s son and Bihar deputy chief minister Tejaswhi Yadav claiming that he was “intimidating” the investigators and “influencing” the investigation into the alleged IRCTC scam. The younger Yadav faces the prospect of going to jail if the court accepts the CBI’s arguments. The court has fixed September 27 as the next date for the hearing.
But Lalu and Mamata have reacted differently to the BJP’s machinations. Lalu is as defiant as ever while Mamata seems to be on the defensive. Lalu’s audacity, belligerence and consistent defiance against the BJP – be it the era of L.K. Advani-A.B Vajpayee or Narendra Modi-Amit Shah – set him apart from Mamata and most other regional satraps.
After he was convicted in the fodder scam cases, Lalu was jailed for four years. He is suffering from multiple ailments even after his release. He is weak and requires close monitoring by the doctors. The family sources confirmed that he might go to Singapore soon to get a kidney transplant. But he is full of energy, zeal and vigour when it comes to attacking the BJP.
“The BJP is our enemy number one. We will surely uproot it in the 2024 elections. Nitish Kumar (Bihar CM) and I will meet Sonia Gandhi (Congress president) soon to unite the opposition parties,” Lalu, addressing his party cadres after almost four years, thundered.
His electrifying speeches send adrenaline coursing through the veins of RJD leaders and workers. “He is Napoleon Bonaparte to us,” said Mritunjay Tiwari, RJD’s Bihar spokesman.
Lalu’s comments in the context of Amit Shah’s visit
Look at the timing of Lalu’s trenchant attack on the BJP. The Union home minister Amit Shah begins his two-day tour to Bihar’s Seemanchal (border) region, comprising Purnia and Kishanganj, on Friday. This is a Muslim-majority region.
Two days ago Lalu said, “Shah ke man mein kuchh kalaa hai (There is something morbid in Shah’s heart). They ride on mosques to hoist saffron flags and create a communal frenzy. Uprooting them from power and packing them off is the need of the hour.”
Amit Shah’s visit to Seemanchal is perceived as the BJP’s efforts to build the narrative that could sharpen the communal divide in the run-up to the 2024 elections a la Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh in 2013-14. Lalu has raised an alarm about this possibility.
New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah speaks during the launch of a book Maharaja: Sahastra Varshon Ka Dharmyudh in New Delhi, Friday, June 10, 2022.
“Deploy your intelligence and security men strategically to keep a vigil on what Shah does in Purnia and Kishanganj. He (Shah) should not be allowed to disturb communal peace in Bihar,” Lalu advised chief minister Nitish and deputy CM Tejaswhi.
Reports from the ground say that a huge number of Bihar police officers have also been deployed in Purnia with instructions to watch the cadres of the militant wings of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) has decided to organise meetings at all block headquarters of the state on September 27 to alert the people against the “communal atmosphere” that the Sangh parivar could build to reap a political harvest in elections.
Lalu and other satraps
After 2015, the CBI vigorously followed up on four more cases related the fodder scam. He was convicted in one after the other. Lalu stayed in jail for well over four years, missing the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and the 2020 assembly elections. He was released on bail only after completing half of his sentence in the cases – the statutory provisions to grant bail.
Now, Lalu cannot be sent to jail in fodder scam cases. But the CBI has filed fresh cases related to “job in lieu of land” and alleged irregularities in handing over two IRCTC hotels to private operators against him, his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejashwi. This is being perceived in political circles as the BJP’s ploy to send Lalu and his family members to jail ahead of the 2024 polls.
But Lalu is undeterred. And so is his son Tejashwi. “Jo darega woh marega, jo ladega wo jeetega (The one who fears dies, the one who fights wins),” Tejashwi has repeatedly said, inviting the CBI, ED and IT to “open their offices” at his home. “It will make no difference to our fight with the BJP, even if it sends all the opposition leaders to jail,” he says.
File photo of RJD leaders Rabdri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav and Lalu Prasad.
On the contrary, there is evidence to suggest that other regional satraps have made compromises with the BJP and in the process have been weakened.
The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati worked more to defeat the Samajwadi Party (SP) than the BJP in the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh in January 2022. She pitted Muslim candidates in such a manner that they could cut into the SP’s vote and help the BJP in many constituencies. An ally of the SP also made this allegation.
The Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also claimed that Mayawati had a “secret” deal with the BJP because the latter rejected his (Rahul’s) offer to align with the Congress – despite offering Mayawati the CM post. Now the BSP has been reduced to a 10% vote share in Uttar Pradesh and is faced with an existential crisis in the state in which it grew and prospered. It is widely believed in UP’s political circles that the BJP “blackmailed” Behanji—as Mayawati is commonly referred to—through the investigating agencies.
The Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav created a stir in 2019, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, when he said he hopes Modi would “return to power”. The grapevine had it that Mulayam did it to wriggle out of the cases related to ‘defence deals’ that the BJP was gearing up to implicate him in.
The investigating agencies have implicated some members of Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) too in the cases of financial irregularities. “There are instances of Sharad Pawar playing tactical with the BJP to avoid trouble on his family and party members,” remarked a senior Mahagathbandhan leader under the condition of anonymity, adding, “No one is as true and pure as Laluji is in their opposition to the RSS-BJP.”
Nitish is different
In a way, Nitish Kumar is also different from other regional satraps. He has worked in alliance with the BJP for political reasons rather than as a compromise to the saffron party’s blackmail. He has worked like a BJP’s “political ally” – largely sticking to his party’s commitment to secularism and justice, guarding his credential as the secular and liberal leader.
He might have been silent on Narendra Modi when he was in an alliance but he is sharper, cogent and more factual in his attack on the BJP – particularly on Modi – when away from the NDA. It was he who first procured factual evidence of Modi promising Rs 15 lakh in everyone’s bank accounts and played a video of the claim in all election meetings in 2015. And today, he is far ahead of others in reaching out to opposition parties to forge unity ahead of the 2024 election.
Kiara Advani
