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ShareDhanbad (Jharkhand): This tribal-dominated state is facing an electoral wave of a different kind. Keeping aside the spiralling prices and caste permutations and combinations, the flavour of the ongoing five-phase state Assembly elections is former chief minister Madhu Koda. He has become the favourite whipping boy for the political rivals for reasons suiting their respective political motives.
The saga of Koda's alleged corrupt practices that took places during his tenure as the chief minister seemed to have become his nemesis. Who is responsible for creating Koda the politician? This is the question being hotly debated between the main rivals, Congress and the BJP.
Koda was an RSS man and had entered the Assembly for the first time as a BJP legislator and became the mines minister in the dispensation. And thus started his tryst with the minting money. On their part the BJP holds the Congress solely responsible for giving Koda the "free run" while backing him as chief minister for nearly two years. Why didn't they withdraw the support, the party chief Rajnath Singh asked.
The Congress is hard-pressed to explain as to why the party took so much time to act against Koda and his aides and stop them from plundering the newly-carved state. On record the party leaders pinpoint to the mass agitation launched by them, under Maken's leadership, against Koda while he was in office. Off the record, they cite compulsions of the coalition to have acted against them as their erstwhile allies Laloo Yadav (RJD) and Shibu Soren (Jharkhand Mukti Morcha) had thwarted moves to disturb the Koda government.
Sensing that Rs4000 crore corruption charges against Koda was a potential vote garnering issue, the Congress has stepped up its anti-corruption campaign. And as part of this strategy pushed Maken into electioneering as he was the sort of whistleblower who had first started the anti-Koda campaign while being AICC incharge of Jharkhand.
Maken rejected the BJP charge that the Congress had patronized Koda while he was the chief minister. "We had gone after him even at that time and a concerted campaign was launched by the Congress from block to the state level to expose his corrupt practices but not before serving an ultimatum to him to perform before he perished," he said.
In fact, the Koda saga has brought the Congress into reckoning in the state elections as it has been sitting in the Opposition for the last nine years. Koda aside, certain others reasons such as the Muslim and backward class voters turning towards the Congress is also helping the party.
