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Centre to send team to Bihar to study law and order

The Union cabinet today reviewed the law and order situation in Bihar and decided to depute a team of senior officials of the home ministry for an on-the-spot evaluation of the situation prevailing in the state.

The team will submit its report to the Centre at the earliest.

This was disclosed by Home Minister L K Advani while talking to newsmen after a cabinet meeting which was presided over by Prime Minister A B Vajpayee.

While replying to a query from newsmen whether he shared the state governor's view that the situation in Bihar was ''grim,'' Advani said after the killing of several political leaders in a short span of time, the situation cannot be described as otherwise.

Meanwhile, Bihar Governor Sunder Singh Bhandari is under mounting pressure from all non-Rashtriya Janata Dal and non-Congress parties to recommend President's rule in the state following the recent murder of two legislators in the state.

Six left parties, including the CPI-M, have called for a state-wide bandh tomorrow to protest against the law and order situation in the state.

Today a 21-member delegation of the Bihar Jan Congress urged the governor to recommend to the Centre to dismiss the Rabri Devi government in view of the ''complete breakdown of law and order machinery.''

The Bharatiya Janata Party, the Samata Party and the Janata Dal leaders had met the governor yesterday with a similar demand in the wake of the murder of the RJD legislator Brij Behari Prasad in judicial custody in Patna on June 13 and the slaying of CPI-M MLA Ajit Sarkar in Purnea on June 14.

The BJC delegation led by Dr Jagannath Mishra told the governor that an extraordinary situation was prevailing in the state following the ''breakdown of the state administrative machinery and constitutional framework.'' Mishra pleaded with the governor that the situation prevailing in the state was even worse than the situation in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir in the eighties, and all conditions in the state warranted imposition of President's rule.

The national general secretary of the Samata Party, Brishen Patel, said today that Bihar was a fit test-case for invoking Article 356, and the Centre should act without any delay to save the situation from further deterioration.

Patel alleged that the ruling RJD was now trying to get political mileage out of the killing of former Bihar minister Brij Bihari Prasad in judicial custody and falsely implicated the Samata Party's newly elected MLA, Bhupendra Nath Dubey in this killing.

Demanding an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into all political killings during the regime of Laloo Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, the Samata Party leader said only a high-level probe would unravel the truth.

The party would, however, not support the demand of other parties for sending a central team to assess the law and order situation in the state as the governor had already sent his report to the Centre, Patel said.

UNI

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