1. Following upon the unprecedented police transgressions in the Bihar Assembly on 23 March 2021 the Socialist Party (India) issued the statement dated 24 March 2021 set out in the Appendix below, condemning the incidents and stating inter alia: “In the circumstances, the Socialist Party (India) makes it clear that if no adequate remedial and punitive action is immediately taken, the Party will be constrained to demand the resignation of the state government as it had done in cases of police excesses in respect of other state governments in the past.”
2. More than a fortnight has passed since these disgraceful events. There appears to have been no introspection and no expression of remorse by ruling circles in respect of these incidents. On the contrary, the Bihar Chief Minister, Shri Nitish Kumar, who had sought to justify the action of the police and the assaults made on elected representatives of the people, has since made no amends. Nor has there been any remedial action sought or taken by the state government or the party to which the Chief Minister belongs. It is now sufficiently and adequately evident that the events of 23 March 2021 in which legislators, including women legislators, were dragged and assaulted, occurred with the active connivance of the State Government and the Assembly Secretariat and in fact at their behest.
3. The Socialist position on police excesses has been well-defined historically in the 1950s and especially in 1954 when police excesses by the then Socialist-led Government in Travancore-Cochin were severely condemned by Socialists and the resignation of the Chief Minister of that state sought. While in Travancore-Cochin there had been deaths by firing, the present case in Bihar is no less serious a police transgression even in the absence of some of the Travancore-Cochin features. As the Bihar transgressions occurred within the precincts of the Legislature, a dangerous precedent has been set which would open the door for worse in the future not only in Bihar but also in India as a whole. These need therefore to be stoutly resisted and stoutly resisted now.
4. There can now be no manner of doubt that Shri Nitish Kumar and his Government have cut themselves adrift from their initial Socialist moorings. They have for sometime made an ideological and constitutional surrender to the policies and ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the current Government led by that Party at the Centre.
This fact has been evident also for some time in the recent legislative initiatives of the Bihar Government and its silences on matters of grave concern to India’s peasantry and to the future of its democracy. The recently introduced state legislation seeking to confer sweeping powers on the police goes against the grain of the highest principles of India’s Constitution and is contrary also to the Indian Socialist ethos.
5. Bearing in mind all these facts the Socialist Party (India) considers the Nitish Kumar Government to be a blot upon the Socialist movement in India. The Socialist Party (India) has therefore concluded that it must demand the resignation of the Nitish Kumar Government. Consequently, it directs its cadres in Bihar and elsewhere to mobilise public opinion to reinforce and effectuate this demand.
Pannalal Surana, Anil Nauriya
Socialist Party (India)
Appendix:
Earlier Press Release by SP(I): Socialist Party (India) Condemns the Entry of Police Force into Bihar Assembly and Assault on Legislators
