NEW DELHI, 16 July 2003 — Senior Samata Party leader Nitish Kumar, whose offer to quit as railways minister was rejected by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, yesterday refused to take back his resignation and said he would not return to his office.
Kumar offered to quit on Monday, citing graft accusations made against him from within his Samata Party — a key constituent of Vajpayee’s 19-party coalition government. Although Vajpayee rejected Kumar’s resignation, the besieged minister said yesterday: “My conscience does not allow me to go to work.” The allegations were brought by some members of the Samata Party at a meeting of its national council on Monday.
“My heart is broken,” he told reporters gathered at his official residence.
Kumar said he had asked the prime minister to investigate the charges, but would not elaborate on their nature. “I will not return to work unless these charges are proved baseless,” he said.
Kumar has also faced criticism following more than a dozen train accidents or derailments this year, which killed at least 139 people. Kumar’s ministry has blamed several of them on sabotage by rebel groups active in different parts of the country.
Maoist rebels derailed four passenger trains in northern India yesterday, but no one was hurt, a railway official said, detailing one of the biggest assaults by the leftist guerrillas in recent years.
The four trains — all slow local services — were derailed after several stretches of track were blown up during the night, Santosh Kumar, a spokesman for the East Central Railway zone, said in Bihar.
“We believe that all this has happened due to a strike call by the Maoists,” Kumar said.
The rebels have previously targeted small rural railway stations, police posts, security patrols and rural landlords in their fight for peasant rights.
A Railway Ministry spokesman in New Delhi said police had stepped up patrols in the region, a stronghold of the rebels, who are known to have close links with Maoist rebels across the border in Nepal.
“Police are still looking for other bombs but traffic has been restored in the region except on routes where the tracks were damaged last night,” the spokesman said.
“Trains traveling in the region have been ordered to reduce their speed at night to prevent any casualties if there are fresh incidents,” he said.
The Maoist Communist Center (MCC) called for a strike across northern Bihar yesterday to protest against the arrest of several rebel leaders.
— Additional input from Agencies
The MCC accuses the government of exploiting poor farmers and runs parallel administrations in several areas where it is strong.
The Maoist movement in Bihar peaked in the 1970s and has been only sporadically active in pockets since then.
