PATNA: A day after Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar asserted that law and order was his government’s top priority, leaders of the opposition INDIA bloc on Saturday staged a protest march at district headquarters across the state to vent their ire against the ‘rising’ crime graph in the state.
Senior leaders from the state's opposition alliance comprising the RJD, Congress, CPI (ML), CPI, CPI (M) and former minister Mukesh Sahani's Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) participated in the protest march.
In the state capital, the protest march started from the Income Tax roundabout and culminated at the Collectorate where opposition leaders submitted a memorandum to the district magistrate Chandrashekhar Singh. The INDIA bloc leaders threatened to intensify the agitation against the state government if the law and order situation did not improve.
Bihar Congress president Akhilesh Prasad Singh accused the state government of stopping the opposition's protest march as police put barricades at various places. He said that the situation had become so alarming that relatives of senior leaders were being killed inside their homes, obliquely referring to the murder of VIP chief and former minister Mukesh Sahani's father Jitan Manjhi in Darbhanga recently.
State RJD chief spokesperson Shakti Yadav alleged that criminals were so emboldened that they had no fear of consequences. He claimed that criminal activities could not rise on such an alarming scale without the state government’s patronage to outlaws.
“Police personnel at the behest of the state government were fully active in disrupting our protest march by putting barricades near Dakbunglow Chauraha in the state capital but they do not show the same enthusiasm in controlling criminal activities,” he remarked.
RJD spokesperson Ejaz Ahmed said that review meetings on the state's law order situation would not serve any purpose if effective measures were not taken.
Meanwhile, deputy chief minister Samrat Choudhary said it was 'hypocrisy' on the part of the RJD that a party which brought lawlessness to the state when it was in power was now attacking the NDA government on law and order.
Senior BJP leader and state health minister Mangal Pandey, without taking the name of RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his party, claimed the RJD gave tickets to people known for their 'shady past' in the recently held Lok Sabha election. They (RJD) should feel ashamed about it, he added.