Bihar Babus In The Cross Hairs Of Nitish’s Return Fire Over IAS Officer's Arrest

Whatever illusions Bihar’s IAS officers might have harboured about Chief minister Nitish Kumar’s ‘soft corner’ for their tribe must have been dispelled with the state government taking a tough stand on their recent protests against the arrest of Sudhir Kumar, chairman of Bihar Staff Selection Commission (BSSC), on corruption charges.

The IAS Officers’ Association in the state has been up in arms ever since a special investigating team (SIT) of the state police took the 1987-batch officer, along with some of his relatives, into custody over his allegedly dubious role in a mega recruitment scam that rocked Bihar last month.

Crying foul, it jumped to Sudhir’s rescue within hours after his ‘arbitrary’ arrest and followed it up with an unprecedented method of protest -- a human chain in the prohibited zone outside Raj Bhawan in Patna.

The Nitish government has now served a show-cause to about 30 IAS officers, mostly district magistrates, who had joined protests without obtaining permission from their superiors before leaving their respective places of work on that day.

The government move has come as a surprise since bureaucrats in general are widely considered to be the blue-eyed boys of the Chief minister for having played a key role in facilitating the state’s turnaround in the past 12 years. As a matter-of-fact, Nitish insulated the state administration from undue political interference all these years and gave it a free hand to bring Bihar back on the rails of good governance. In doing so, he even earned snide remarks of fellow politicians, including leaders of his coalition, for being ‘lenient’ towards the bureaucracy.

Nitish always took such criticisms in his stride in the past but the babus shot themselves in the foot by training their guns on him in the wake of Sudhir’s arrest. They not only demanded a CBI probe as well as immediate release of the jailed officer, but also resolved to take no more verbal orders from the Chief minister’s office. Apparently peeved at their audacity, the Nitish government has now returned fire by slapping show-cause notices on them.

One can understand the alacrity with which the elite organisation of the all-powerful babus stepped forward to fight for one of its ‘finest and honest officers’ but targeting Nitish was an ill-advised move, to say the least. The association is, of course, well within its right to defend its senior member but it would have done well not to dismiss the prima facie findings of the investigating team with such disdain, and in a tearing hurry.

Sudhir is, in fact, the 34th person to be jailed following the leakage of question papers of an examination conducted by BSSC for recruitment for 96,000 clerical jobs. Mere allegations, of course, do not make anybody guilty and SIT will have to prove the charges in the courts of law but neither the IAS officer nor his association can expect any immunity from arrest if there is any prima facie evidence of his complicity in the scam.

The episode has unnecessarily brought to the fore the great divide between the general administration and the state police once again in Bihar. The IAS officers have often been critical of the way the cops have handled the corruption cases involving anyone from their exalted fraternity in the past.

Last year, their association had cried foul when a 2013-batch officer Jitendra Gupta, then a sub-divisional officer at Mohania in Rohtas district, was arrested on bribery charges. Its stand was vindicated when the Patna High Court later set aside the charges after finding no evidence against him.

Still, protests of the IAS officers have raised a vital point or two. Should the police or the SIT refrain from interrogating or arresting a senior officer if any prima-facie evidence is found against him in the course of investigation? Should an IAS officer, or for that matter any other influential person, be treated differently from other accused incarcerated in the same case?

The SIT reiterates that it has got hold of solid evidences against Sudhir and all other accused in the scam. In the wake of the Bihar matriculation examination scam last year, the SIT had arrested Lalkeshwar Prasad, chairman of the Bihar State Examination Board, and his wife Usha Sinha, a former JD-U legislator, on the basis of prima facie proofs against them.

Should the SIT now follow a different route for the arrest of the accused in the recruitment examination scam simply because the IAS officers are making a big issue out of it? It is to the credit of Nitish that he has refused to buckle under the melodramatic protests of the state babus?

It is, of course, for the courts ultimately to examine the evidences. Like any other accused in the case, Sudhir has all the legal recourses at his disposal to come out clean. But nobody should expect any special treatment from the law-enforcing agencies. In his case too, it is the nature of evidence that will eventually determine his fate.

Let the law take its proverbial course through a fair trial.