NEW DELHI, 23 December 2004 — India’s election panel began investigations yesterday into allegations that one of the country’s most colorful politicians distributed cash to lower caste women ahead of February elections in his home state.

But Railway Minister and RJD Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav rejected BJP-led NDA’s demand for his resignation. “Why should I resign? I have not committed any crime,” he said in Patna yesterday.

Lalu described the NDA charge against him as “biased and politically-motivated.”

The independent Election Commission ordered the inquiry into the actions of Lalu after he was shown on television handing out money to the women while campaigning in the eastern state of Bihar.

Meanwhile, a group of Dalits in Bihar have filed a case against Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishnamurthy for filing an first information report (FIR against) Lalu for giving them money to eat “sweets.” The case filed the Dalit Atrocities Prevention Act in a Patna court also names Bihar’s chief electoral officer K.C. Saha and the officer in charge of the police station in Bihta where the FIR against Lalu was lodged.

Also, four women recorded their statement before a magistrate in Danapur saying a group of children had stopped the chief minister’s convoy and demanded money for sweets.

The four women from Ibrahimpur village near Bihta insisted the money was to buy sweets.

Lalu, seldom far from the news with his penchant for political theatrics, said he had given 100 rupees ($2.28) to some women only to buy sweets and not to buy their votes.

“I have not violated the model code of conduct by giving money for purchasing sweets,” said the straw-haired Lalu, a powerful lower caste leader in Bihar where murder and kidnap rates are the highest in India.

“Nobody can purchase votes.” He said he had given money to Dalit women when they stopped his vehicle at Bihta and asked for money to buy sweets on his elevation as railway minister.

The issue created a furor in Parliament with the opposition demanding that the minister be sacked. Lalu, who was born into a cowherd’s family, rode to power in fiercely caste-divided Bihar in 1990 with a campaign for “social justice.” Lalu has had previous brushes with the law.

Three years ago, he was remanded to judicial custody after federal police charged him over allegations that 1.39 billion rupees of state money earmarked for animal welfare was embezzled between 1991 and 1996 when he was Bihar’s chief minister.

Lalu, the state’s de facto ruler, installed his wife as chief minister after being jailed over the $30 million graft case.

The minister was forced to call off a rally in Bihar scheduled for today after the Election Commission asked whether his regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) party, an ally of Congress in the federal coalition, should be derecognized.

But newspapers said this was not the end of Lalu, whom cartoonists often lampoon as “lallu” or a clumsy dimwit.

“Given his legendary guile, staying power and unquestioned hold over the Bihar electorate, it would be imprudent, to say the least, to count Lalu out,” said the Hindustan Times.