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Rabri has lost the right to rule, says Sonia

Tara Shankar Sahay in New Delhi

Congress president Sonia Gandhi today said the Rashtriya Janata Dal government in Bihar led by Rabri Devi had forfeited its right to rule in view of its failure to protect the dalits in Jehanabad district.

Congress spokesman Ajit Jogi said in New Delhi that Sonia expressed deep shock at the brutal massacre of dalits by the Ranvir Sena at Narayanpur village last night.

According to Jogi, she said the recurrence of such gruesome violence against the weaker sections of society deserves universal condemnation and called for strong deterrent action against the culprits.

By failing to protect the dalits, Chief Minister Rabri Devi had forfeited her moral authority to govern, she said.

In a move certain to rile RJD president and Rabri Devi's husband Laloo Prasad Yadav, Jogi also announced that she will visit Narayanpur on Saturday, February 13.

But Jogi was ill at ease when a reporter asked him why the Congress had not withdrawn support to the Bihar government. He merely said the Congress had never extended unconditional support to Rabri Devi and claimed it wanted to prevent communal forces from coming to power.

Actually, the Congress's Bihar unit, led by Sadanand Singh, has been clamouring for withdrawal of the party's support to the RJD government for long. Sonia's statement comes as a shot in the arm for the party's Bihar unit.

In political terms, her criticism of Rabri Devi's government indicates that the estrangement of the Congress from the Rashtriya Loktantrik Morcha (National Democratic Front) comprising Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party and the RJD is complete.

The Samajwadi Party began baiting the Congress soon after the assembly election last November, when Mulayam Singh realised that Sonia's party wants to contest the next general election on its own even in Uttar Pradesh, his home turf. Since then his Man Friday, Amar Singh, has lost no opportunity to take pot-shots at the Congress, even placing it on par with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the SP's pantheon of political devils.

Yet Laloo Yadav has all along been tried to maintain a semblance of cordiality in his relations with the Congress.

Significantly, the Congress's strategy for revival, chalked out at its Pachmarhi session last summer, leaves no room for parties like the Samajwadi Party and the RJD to ride on its back to power.

A senior Congress politician said the party under Sonia has been following the right course, as a result of which it has been making rapid strides. He said it was chiefly because of her that Muslims had begun returning to the party fold, causing much heart-burn in the RLM which had pretensions to being the sole guardian of Muslim interests.

The Bihar state page

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