Bihar CM Nitish Kumar faces tough questions on crime spurt

Patna: Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar returned to power in 2015 on the plank of good governance but his government has, of late, come under sharp criticism over rising crime graph and incidents of mob lynching.

With less than a year left for 2019 general elections, the Opposition parties have been hinting at using the “lawlessness” in the state as a poll agenda. According to RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav, “Rising crime is an indication that Nitish Kumar’s good governance policy has failed. There is an atmosphere of chaos in the state. Incidents of rape, murder, kidnapping, loot, and mob lynching are on the rise in Bihar.”

Under pressure from the Opposition, the chief minister has been regularly reviewing law and order situation and directing strict action against criminals.

The RJD says that crime graph started climbing after the JD(U) returned to the NDA fold and formed a government with the BJP in July 2017.

“The latest statistics show the situation of lawlessness in Bihar. Nitish Kumar has been silent over the issue,”Tejashwi Yadav said in a tweet.

The figures also reveal that cognizable crime between August 2017 and July 2018 went up by 15 per cent. In the last one year, police registered 2.31 lakh criminal cases of which 2,722 were murders and 1,278 rapes. In August alone, 284 cases of murder were registered.

Between November 2015 and July 2017 — the period when JD(U) was part of the Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar, the number of registered cases was below two lakh. During this period, around 2,400 murders and 1,000 rape cases were reported.

Political observers claim that Nitish Kumar’s foremost agenda was to end “Jungle Raj” in Bihar when he came to power for the first time in 2005. Several criminals were arrested and later convicted and sent to jails which resulted in a massive electoral loss to the RJD.

JD(U) leaders here claim that it was Nitish Kumar’s clean image and good governance policy that kept the RJD and the Congress out of Bihar for almost a decade.

In 2013, however, Nitish Kumar decided to quit the NDA and form an alliance with RJD in Bihar. In 2015 assembly elections JD (U) became part of Grand Secular Alliance and formed a government with RJD and Congress party.

The alliance, however, did not last long as Chief Minister Nitish Kumar dumped the Mahagathbandhan and formed a government with BJP in 2017 on grounds that his Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav’s name had figured in the FIR registered by CBI in connection with the Benami land deals. The scenario changed in March when communal violence broke out in several districts. Delay in action against people involved in instigating tension was also used as a political tool against Nitish Kumar.

The Opposition parties demanded chief minister Nitish Kumar’s resignation on moral grounds after incidents of mob lynching increased. A week earlier, three incidents of mob lynching rocked the state. In one of these cases, a person named Rupesh Jha was killed by an unruly mob in Sitamarhi after a van driver said that he stole money from him.  The police booked 150 people.