NEW DELHI, 26 November 2005 — The nascent National Democratic Alliance government in Bihar received a jolt hours after being sworn in when Cabinet Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi resigned in the wake of a controversy over his alleged involvement in a teachers training institutions scam in the 1990s.
A court charged Manjhi with issuing fake degrees to students in government-run institutes in 1997 when he was the state’s education minister, forcing him to resign and later quit from then-ruling party Rashtriya Janata Dal, or RJD.
Manjhi’s new party — Janata Dal (United) — replaced the RJD earlier this month, and he was named to the Cabinet on Thursday. He was forced out hours later, before he could be given a portfolio, new state leader Nitish Kumar said.
“I found that Manjhi was an accused in the fake degrees scam, so I dropped him from the Cabinet,” Nitish said.
He did not explain how party officials failed to note Manjhi’s legal problems before appointing him, considering that charges stem from his last turn in power.
Manjhi’s trial on the 1997 charges has yet to begin.
Speaking to Arab News by telephone, Manjhi said he had handed in his resignation “voluntarily”. “I have resigned voluntarily and the chief minister did not ask me to quit,” he said adding, “I have no grievance against the chief minister. I have quit as I want the NDA government to have a clean image.”
Breaking her silence on the poll verdict in Bihar, Congress President Sonia Gandhi yesterday implicitly blamed Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan and RJD boss Lalu Prasad for the “disappointing results”.
In an apparent reference to Paswan, whose party contested the election separately despite being part of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in Delhi, she told a Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) meeting that the result was “a signal for secular forces to remain united to propagate more effectively the principles of equality, democracy and development.”
Her reference to “development” was also seen as a criticism of Lalu under whose leadership Congress fought the election in Bihar.
