Laloo refuses to quit as Bihar CM

Janata Dal president Laloo Prasad Yadav said on Monday that he would not resign as Bihar chief minister even if the CBI files a chargesheet against him in the Rs 9.5 billion fodder scam.

''I will accept only a court verdict in the case,'' he told an interviewer on Home TV.

The suggestion that he could regain his chief ministership after getting a clean chit from a court of law did not appeal to Laloo Yadav. The chargesheet, he said, was part of a political conspiracy to malign him. If he resigned, he added, his detractors's gameplan of removing him without a trial would succeed. ''But I won't allow such designs to succeed,'' he declared.

Laloo Yadav said this should not imply that he is more interested in power than his own reputation. Alleging that the CBI had become a political tool, he said it was trying to uproot democratic institutions. He said it had become very easy to fix anyone. ''Get him implicated by the CBI and his fate would be sealed,'' he said.

Asserting that the CBI's chargesheet would not mean that he is an offender, Laloo Yadav said he would expose the CBI's ''bundle of lies'' in court. When the interviewer pointed out that Prime Minister I K Gujral had said he would have resigned if such charges were levelled against him, the Bihar chief minister said he was not that kind of person.

Some 300 officials and staff, he said, had plundered the animal husbandry department. The scam had begun in 1977, whereafter many chief ministers ruled the state. ''But none is being blamed except me,'' he said.

Meanwhile, dissident Janata Dal leaders and the four sacked ministers have accused Laloo Yadav of destroying the party.

Addressing the media at the home of Pasupati Kumar Paras who resigned as state jails minister on Saturday, the ministers declared that they would retire from active politics if it was proved that they had misused government funds as the chief minister had alleged.

The sacked ministers -- Ramjivan Singh, Bijendra Prasad Yadav, Magni Lal Mandal and Ramai Ram -- legislators Gautam Sagar Rana, Tanvir Hassan and Punit Rai reiterated that they would leave no stone unturned in reviving the party.

UNI

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