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Bihar legislature okays creation of Jharkhand

Our Correspondent in Patna

The Bihar legislature has okayed the Bihar Reorganisation Bill 2000 after a marathon nine-hour-long debate.

The assembly suggested 314 amendments to the bill. The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party also agreed that the new state would be known as Jharkhand, not Vananchal.

Bihar Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ramchandra Purbey, who initiated the debate after Chief Minister Rabri Devi tabled the Bill, said his party stood for a 'Greater Jharkhand' comprising 27 districts of Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal because it would serve the tribal cause better.

Leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi expressed surprise that while the government had sought Rs 1.79 trillion from the Centre as a package for the truncated Bihar, it had not sought any help for the Jharkhand belt.

He also accused the state government of having deliberately delayed the special session on Jharkhand so that the bill would not be passed in the current session of Parliament.

To that, Rashtriya Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav retorted that the Union government could always call a special session of Parliament to create the new state. For good measure, he quoted Article 3 of the Constitution, which states that the Centre is fully authorised to create a new state or alter the boundaries of any existing state. "Why should we be blamed for delaying the creation of the new state when the opinion of the state assembly does not matter?" he said.

Yadav said the Centre's freight equalisation policy had played havoc with the people of Bihar. "Biharis pay more for their iron and coal than the people in Punjab or elsewhere," he lamented.

He suggested that the posts of governor and chief minister of the new state, as also 90 per cent of the ministerial berths in its Cabinet, be reserved for tribals so that the "designs of the forces of Hindutva are thwarted".

Congress Legislature Party leader Furqan Ansari said that if the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had been committed to the cause of the new state, it would not have tabled the Jharkhand Bill on the last day of the twelfth Lok Sabha.

The RJD's Shivanand Tiwary and Shakeel Ahmed Khan said that while they wished the new state luck, they also feared that the vested interests and mafias controlling south Bihar would grow stronger than ever.

Interestingly, Tribal Welfare Minister Bagun Sumbrai, himself an Adivasi (tribal), and Janata Dal United Legislature Party leader Ganesh Prasad Yadav hoped the two states would reunite some time in future, just like the two Germanys.

Though almost all important parties barring the Communist Party of India, Marxist, supported the bill, the RJD members and even some from the National Democratic Alliance made no effort to conceal the fact that they were being compelled to back it in the changed political situation in the state.

Surprisingly, the debate in the Upper House continued longer than in the assembly and RJD and Congress members called for sending the bill back as it did not state the objective. The Upper House had to be adjourned for 15 minutes.

Water Resources Minister Jagdanand Singh, however, pointed out that the covering letter of the President stated the objective of the bill. JD-U legislator Mangini Lal Mandal made a passionate appeal to reject the Bill, though his party is a constituent of the NDA, the alliance that is ruling the Centre.

This was the third time the Bihar assembly debated the Reorganisation Bill. In 1956 and 1998 it had rejected the measure.

Now the ball is in the Centre's court. But it is still not clear if the road to Jharkhand has been cleared completely. Some key members of the NDA like the Telugu Desam Party, Shiv Sena and Trinamul Congress appear to be in no mood to support its creation.

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