Rabri attacks Nitish govt

The Rashtriya Janata Dal, led by former Chief Minister Rabri Devi, today staged a "sit-in" here to protest against the police lathicharge on agitating teachers on Sunday.

Attacking the one-month-old NDA government, she said this was "a government of criminals" and called for stringent action against the police officials responsible for it.

"On completing a month in office on Saturday, Nitish Kumar gave this atrocious gift to people," Rabri Devi said while addressing party workers.

Devi also said that instead of fulfilling its promise to improve the law and order within a fortnight or a month, the government gave out a message that any form of agitation would be crushed with force.

"But we will not allow the government to do so. We want to play a constructive role of Opposition and will not spare them for wrong-doings," she said.

Rabri Devi also threatened that her party would launch an agitation if Kumar failed to fulfil his promise of improving the situation in the state within three months.

"We haven't seen any change during their first month in power. But we will give the government two more months to set things right and deliver the goods," Rabri Devi said.

Castigating the chief minister and his Cabinet colleagues for allegedly making "big promises" and going on "laying foundation stones" of development schemes in Bihar, she commented that the new regime was following in the foot-steps of the erstwhile NDA government at the Centre which had miserably failed to deliver.

"Nitish Kumar had embarked on laying the foundation stones of several projects when he was the railway minister but all those projects remained a pipe-dream," she alleged.

Describing the lathicharge as an act of "extreme police brutality", she demanded that the state government punish the authorities responsible for it.

RJD national spokesman Shivanand Tiwari and other ministers in the Rabri Devi government, including Ramchandra Purve and Shyam Rajak, also spoke on the occasion.

Twenty-five teachers were injured when police baton-charged hundreds of "siksha mitras" (temporary teachers) demonstrating at the Hartali Chowk blocking the busy Bailey Road here to press for their charter of demands, including enhancing their monthly honorariums from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,600 and regularising their jobs.