Nitish thought that his stakes as chief minister were far greater than his stakes in protecting one of his party MLAs. He could not allow his rule-of-law train to be derailed by a small rock on the track.
On the contrary, if he removed it to keep the train moving at a steady speed he would gain strong public admiration and sympathy that would help him take the masses along in carrying out other tasks.
A fascinating excerpt from Arun Sinha's must-read book Nitish Kumar And The Rise Of Bihar.
From their long experience, the bureaucracy had learnt to carefully distinguish between criminals in the ruling camp and criminals in the Opposition. Officers could clash head-on with criminals regardless of the ruler's patronage or its absence, but headstrong officers were more of an exception than the rule.
The majority looked the other way when the criminal-politicians of the ruling camp violated the law. It was a tradition, a habit that would not change seamlessly with the change of government.
Although Nitish did not tire of conveying to the bureaucracy in his public speeches and at his meetings with officers that his objective was to establish the writ of the state without prejudice, down the line the officialdom believed it to be no more than the public face of political hypocrisy -- the usual bluff and bluster of all chief ministers.
Narendra Kumar alias Sunil Pandey, the criminal-politician and JD(U) MLA from Piro in Bhojpur district checked into a five-star hotel in Patna on 25 June 2006 with his wife, son and armed bodyguards, ordered sumptuous meals and drinks, and refused to pay the bills.
When the hotel staff persisted with the payment demand, the boozed-up bully scared them away by threatening to kill them.
Deciding to take bitter revenge, the hotel staff rang up TV newsrooms asking them to broadcast the 'real face' of Nitish's good governance. Pandey was furious on seeing TV journalists barge into his suite. 'How dare you come here to spy on me? You will have to pay with your life,' he fumed, shouting out to one of his bodyguards, 'Vishwanath, shoot them!'
It became 'breaking news' on local TV channels, with a hurt media seeking bytes from Opposition leaders to ridicule Nitish's claims of curbing criminals. As if to emphasise the irony, the incident occurred soon after Nitish gave a speech in the city explaining how hard he had tried to re-establish the rule of law during his first seven months in office.
When someone in the media asked Kundan Krishnan, the senior superintendent of police, Patna, what action he had taken, he said prosaically: 'No one has registered a complaint with the police. No victims or eyewitnesses have approached us so far.'
The matter would have rested there had the mood in the media, which had been very favourable to Nitish since he took over, not turned hostile.
There was also a general reading among JD(U) party officials and the chief minister's office that the Pandey episode could severely dent the government's clean, rule-enforcing image. The Opposition would capitalise on it, using the incident as a burning example of Nitish's double standards.
Nitish saw the risk in not taking action against Pandey. But he also had to weigh in the risk of antagonising him. How could he forget that Pandey had been his staunch supporter for several years? As a Samata MLA in 2000 he was among the leading party men engaged in getting the right numbers in the House for Nitish to be able to prove he enjoyed a majority.
True, Nitish had no great respect or special affection for Pandey; nor did he consider him good party material or a worthy colleague. He did not have any long-term view of his relationship with Pandey; with criminals like him looking for temporary shelter, he knew the connection could snap any moment.
Yet it also remained true that Nitish had helped him earn social prestige by admitting him as a member of his party, first the Samata and then the JD(U), and then by giving him party ticket in the assembly elections in 2000 and 2005.
He had nominated him despite being fully aware of his criminal antecedents and active association with the Ranvir Sena, because he was sure that with the support of his Bhumihar caste-men, who treated him like a hero, and by the power of arms Pandey would win the seat, which he did both times.
However, Nitish thought that his stakes as chief minister were far greater than his stakes in protecting one of his party MLAs. He could not allow his rule-of-law train to be derailed by a small rock on the track.
On the contrary, if he removed it to keep the train moving at a steady speed he would gain strong public admiration and sympathy that would help him take the masses along in carrying out other tasks.
Nitish asked his principal secretary R C P Singh to call the DGP to instruct the Patna SP to have a complaint registered against Pandey at Korwali, the concerned police station. Accordingly, about twelve hours after the episode the police registered a case.
As the police prepared to arrest him, Pandey went into hiding. 'Efforts to trace him are on,' Patna SP Vikas Vaibhav told the media. Being in a foul mood the media took his statement with a pinch of salt, suspecting that it was all a stage-managed affair which, while boosting Nitish's image, brought no harm to Pandey.
On the other side, Pandey felt aggrieved by Nitish's instituting the case against him. To Pandey's advantage there was rancour among other criminal-politicians against the 'growing influence of bureaucracy' over the Nitish government. There were some party dissidents too who joined the malevolent chorus.
As if to provide proof of the unbridled authority given to officers, SSP Kundan Krishnan used force to arrest another criminal-politician, Anand Mohan, in Patna. Pandey went on television to denounce Krishnan's 'high-handedness'; and he stunned everyone by adding that had Krishnan behaved with him in a similar manner, 'I would have shot him dead.'
Nitish had been receiving reports about Pandey's plot to mobilise a good number of party MLAs to demonstrate his strength to bully him:
Pandey's daredevil statement on TV in denunciation of his government came as a confirmation of this. This was a direct challenge to Nitish, and he could have ignored it at his own peril. He spoke to the party president Sharad Yadav, who agreed that Pandey deserved disciplinary action.
The party issued him a show cause notice, asking him why he should not be suspended for his statements. Pandey tried hard to get out of it with regrets and apologies like he had regarding the hotel episode, but in vain, as both Nitish and Sharad held that if his open defiance was condoned it could embolden others to make any statement they liked against the government or party leadership.
Pandey was suspended from the primary membership of the party. Nitish took a risk, and it paid off: Pandey dropped his plan of jolting Nitish and reconciled to the situation in which he had to fight his own legal battles.
He missed no opportunity now to reaffirm his loyalty to the party and to Nitish, telling anyone who listened that the party or government had nothing to do with the cases filed against him; that the cases were regarding his acts, and it was he who would have to deal with them in the courts.
Although Nitish had taken in criminals just as other parties had done, he took enough care not to allow himself to be identified with them. Lalu never hid his intimacy with Shahabuddin; the don of Siwan was a regular visitor to 1 Anne Marg. Nitish, extremely conscious about guarding his clean public image, kept his party's criminal MLAs at a distance.
However, no sooner than Nitish had tackled Pandey, another thug in his party, Anant Singh, shot into public focus with his hooliganism. He began to terrorize shop owners in a market complex on Fraser Road in downtown Patna to eject them from their properties, claiming to be the bona fide owner of the plot on which the commercial building stood.
The plot originally belonged to a big landlord, Mehdi Hasan Imam, who had died issueless. Anant Singh claimed that Imam had given away the plot as gifts to his servants who had sold them to him. The shop owners refused to vacate their properties despite harassment by Anant Singh because they claimed to have legal titles.
When the persecution by him crossed tolerable limits, they approached the local police station, but officials there declined to register any complaint. Anant Singh's intimidation continued. Here again, as in Sunil Pandey's case, the police was following double standards in dealing with criminals of the ruling party.
Anant Singh led the most powerful gang in Mokama, from where he was elected as MLA. In the election he received substantial support from his Bhumihar caste; the rest he made up with his terror.
Mokama formed part of the Barh Lok Sabha constituency which Nitish had represented thrice. Nitish had used Anant Singh's mobilizing strength in his election campaigns in Barh. In that sense, Anant Singh had worked more closely with Nitish than Sunil Pandey or any other criminal in the JD(U).
So when unable to get the police to act against Anant Singh the harassed shop owners approached Nitish at his public interaction programme 'Janata ke Durbar mein Mukhya Mantri', that he held every Monday in an annexe at 1 Anne Marg. he faced a greater dilemma than he had in Sunil Pandey's case.
But the quandary lasted not more than a moment, for his public image as a fair-minded ruler was at stake. He called the station house officer of the Kotwali police station immediately to his office and asked him to register the shop owners' complaint against Anant Singh.
He also called the inspector general of police (headquarters), Anil Sinha, and asked him to ensure that the complaint was registered and legal action taken against Anant Singh.
To the media covering the programme he said: 'JD(U), RJD, Congress or BJP, it hardly matters which party, caste or religion one is from. All are equal in the eye of the law. We will act tough against anyone who tries to take the law in his hands.'
Anant Singh was far from subdued. A few weeks later a young Muslim woman shot off letters to Nitish, top cops and the media alleging that Anant Singh had raped her. Soon she was found murdered.
Two TV journalists, who went to Anant Singh's residence to interview him on the rape-and-murder allegations, were battered by him and his bodyguards so mercilessly they had to be rushed to hospital. A group of journalists marched to Anant Singh's residence to protest the assault; they were assaulted too.
The alleged rape and murder and the attack on journalists aroused public disgust and indignation against the brazen behaviour of a criminal who was seen as someone close to Nitish.
If there was anything Nitish feared above all it was the public developing a perception of his regime as being no different from the Lalu-Rabri regime in political patronage of criminals and lawlessness.
He did not want any mud hurled on Singh to stick to him. He ordered the police to arrest Singh and his bodyguards. Under the chief judicial magistrate's order Singh was remanded to jail for nearly two weeks.
Nitish had won the battle against criminal-politicians, which had seemed the toughest of all. There were two factors that had helped him: One, courage. 'I'm not afraid of getting killed. That would be liberation for me if it comes,' he said philosophically to his confidants who apprehended he might invite the wrath of the dons. Two, even-handedness. His endeavour to establish the rule of law through timely police action and speedy trials was directed against all criminals.
The criminal-politicians saw that Nitish was not targeting any of them in particular: he was not selective and he was not 'going after' them. This became still clearer to them when Nitish showed no partiality towards the dons of his own party.
While Nitish allowed the law to take its course and distanced himself from the criminal-politicians in his party, he did not take a firm position on having no association with them. The JD(U) never framed a policy not to have men with criminal antecedents as its embers or election nominees.
Action by Nitish, whether as leader of government or of party, was taken only on occasions when they violated the law or party discipline.
The party did not expel Anant Singh, Sunil Pandey or other criminal-politicians in spite of the negative publicity they often brought to it.
There was never a thug-cleansing launched by the party. The sole reason was that they had demonstrated their ability to win their constituencies: That assured a certain number of seats for the party. So, while the legal processes continued, the criminal-politicians were treated gently by Nitish and the party.
After the media and public anger against Sunil Pandey had subsided, the suspension order against him was withdrawn by the party. And Anant Singh eventually managed to evict the shop owners and take possession of the commercial complex on Fraser Road, because he did have the valid papers and won the case.
As long as the dons did not break party discipline, Nitish allowed them to be in the JD(U). In the assembly elections of 2010, Nitish re-nominated all the criminal-politicians of the party for the constituencies they represented: Anant Singh, Sunil Pandey, Dhumal Singh and Neeraj Singh among them.
Nitish campaigned for many of them in their constituencies, sharing the dais with them, urging people to vote for them. Most of them won, too, and largely because people voted for Nitish regardless of who his candidate was.
Yet, their victory also clearly suggested that the two factors that always helped criminals win elections -- terror and caste -- still remained crucial.
A significant point to note was that their terror worked despite any open display or use of armed power by the gangsters owing to Nitish's campaign against crime and the Election Commission's constant vigilance against violence and rigging.
Both terror and caste worked by word of mouth. However, the fact that the Nitish factor tilted the balance was clear from the success of most of the criminals or their wives nominated by the JD(U) and the failure of those nominated by the RJD and the LJP.
It was not because of the power Nitish enjoyed but because of the popular support for him owing to his performance.
Excerpted from Nitish Kumar And The Rise Of Bihar by Arun Sinha, with the kind permission of the publishers Penguin Random House India.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff