Bihar’s political cauldron

...by the way
Bihar’s political cauldron

Politicians and bureaucrats are inseparable twins. Many bureaucrats like to hide behind the back of their political masters and bag top posts at the Centre. Some of them even aspire to become politicians. Home Secretary RK Singh with the help of Digvijay Singh, a fellow Thakur, is looking to contest the next Lok Sabha elections. He is from Saharsa but it is not clear whether he will contest from there or somewhere else. The new CBI director, Ranjit Sinha, who is also from Bihar, is said to be backed big time by RK Singh and Laloo Prasad Yadav. Sinha was the SP CBI during Laloo’s fodder scam days and he went all out to help the RJD leader. His efforts, however, did not bear fruit because of the tough and uncompromising UN Biswas, who was the then zonal director of the CBI. The court passed strictures against Ranjit Sinha in the fodder scam investigations. Now that the Congress and Laloo’s RJD are in an advanced stage of negotiations over an alliance in Bihar for the next Lok Sabha elections, the rank and file in the Congress is upset that the very sight of Laloo may drive the upper caste vote back to the BJP and Nitish Kumar. The Congress needs an alliance in Bihar given its dismal assembly performance. Congress leaders Meira Kumar and Shakeel Ahmed need the alliance to win their seat. Even RK Singh too favours an alliance with Laloo Yadav. Laloo and Digvijay Singh have been close since the time the Thakur from Madhya Pradesh was in charge of Bihar. Laloo offered Digvijay a Rajya Sabha berth from Bihar and also tried to support moves to make him the Home Minister before P Chidambaram was offered the post. But matters didn’t work out and now Digvijay Singh has begun nursing his Raghogarh constituency as he plans to contest the Lok Sabha elections once his self-announced ‘vanwas’ ends in 2013.