The move of the Nitish Kumar Government to table the NN Singh Commission report on the 1989 communal riots in Bhagalpur in the Assembly has raised many eyebrows as the report has indicted the then State Government of Congress and also the lalu Prasad-led dispensation. The report was tabled at a time when the Assembly election is likely to be announced and the Nitish’s JD(U) has stitched an alliance with RJD and Congress.
Soon after coming to power, the Nitish-led Government of which BJP was an integral part, had constituted a judicial probe panel headed by retired Patna High Court judge NN Singh to inquire afresh the October-November 1989 riots which claimed over a thousand lives and reopen the cases which had been closed by the previous lalu regime on the pretext of lack of evidence.
In its final report the commission accused the then Government (a Congress Government headed by Satyendra Narain Singh) for its indifferent attitude towards the communal frenzy and large scale violence and blamed the police and civil administration of Bhagalpur.
Calling the riots barbaric in nature it termed the violence a ‘national shame’. The report pointed out the ‘insensibility’ with which the victims were treated by those who were in power. “It cannot be denied that whoever lighted the sparks, the minority community invariably suffered and though the provocateurs might have escaped, the wrath always fell on innocent, poor and daily wage earners,” it said.
The tabling of NN Singh report in the Assembly provided occasion to the BJP to lash out at the Nitish Government. Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi said, “Nitish is trying to kill two birds with a single stone. He is using the report to expose the Congress for its failure in preventing the riots and the RJD for its inability to render justice to the victims.”