Stop pointing fingers, find Patna blasts culprits
True to form, certain senior Congress and Janata Dal (United) leaders shamelessly rushed to see “conspiracies” that could “benefit” the Bharatiya Janata Party, behind the serial blasts that occurred hours before Mr Narendra Modi began his speech at the ‘Hunkaar Rally’ in Patna on Sunday. The unsaid part in their rumination was that people sympathetic to the BJP's cause could have engineered the violence to reap political dividend. This mischievous speculation was for them more important than the fact that innocent people had lost their lives or that adequate medical aid was not promptly available to the scores of injured who landed in hospitals or that there was a major lapse in security measures at the site of the rally where several lakh people had gathered to hear Mr Modi. Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh was among the first to float his old theory, which has one constant: ‘Every time there is terror violence in the country, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or its affiliates must be responsible.’ He did that on many earlier occasions, including on the blasts at Bodh Gaya in Bihar. The Congress has not found it fit to rebuke him for repeatedly shooting his mouth off and without waiting for investigations to even begin, let alone complete. It does not matter to the party's high command that its senior leaders not just jump the gun — and create a disharmonious environment — but also that the speculation of these leaders have turned out to be far from true. For instance, investigating authorities believe that the Bodh Gaya incident could be the handiwork of Islamist terror elements. Similarly, Patna Police has indicated that the Indian Mujahideen could be involved in the Sunday blasts in Patna. That these revelations expose the lies of irresponsible leaders of the Congress, does not appear to matter for the party, which is desperate to cash in on any incident, howsoever tragic and inimical to national security, to prop up its sagging electoral fortune. Certain leaders of the JD(U), which rules Bihar, too have resorted to the dangerous game, and not just because they want to condemn the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar. The JD(U) wants to deflect public attention from its Government's lapses. Thus, we have one of its leaders say that he finds the timing of the blasts “suspicious”, although he offers no justification for the remark.
Since law and order is a State subject, the JD(U) cannot wash its hands of the incident. From all bipartisan accounts, crowd control and security measures were poor in Patna where lakhs of people had gathered for the rally — the first by Mr Modi in many years in Bihar. The Chief Minister had on some pretext absented himself from the city, and returned only after the gravity of the situation hit home. Senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad has alleged that the district administration went back on key assurances it had given the organisers when they met officials in the run-up to the rally. There were few ambulances at the site to meet an emergency, no or few bomb disposal squads, and no crowd control measures in place. This is shocking, given that every official of the State knew beforehand the scale of the event. Political differences will always be there in a robust democracy such as ours, but there is no place for violence.