Implications of guilty verdict for Lalu Prasad in second fodder scam case

The much-awaited verdict on whether or not Lalu Prasad Yadav, the firebrand leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and former chief minister of Bihar, is guilty in the second fodder scam case, has come. The RJD chief has been convicted in the Deoghar treasury case, in which he and others were accused of fraudulently withdrawing Rs 89.27 lakh from the treasury between 1991 and 1994, while co-accused and former CM Jagannath Mishra has been acquitted.    

While the quantum of sentencing will be announced on January 3, 2018, the conviction is being seen as ending the season of acquittals for the UPA parties, particularly the DMK and the Congress, given the the verdicts in 2G case and Adarsh scam that sent shock waves across the country earlier this week. The guilty verdict for Lalu, however, carries immense weight and is likely to influence how the RJD positions itself in the alliance arithmetic in 2018 and 2019 elections.

The Deogarh treasury case pertains to money withdrawn, illegally, as the court now says, from the treasury in the years when Lalu Yadav was the Bihar CM. Though the amount isn’t staggering, about Rs 89.27 lakhs, it forms part of the larger, multi-crore fodder scam, wherein money was siphoned off in the name of buying cattle feed and landed in personal coffers of RJD leaders, particularly Lalu Yadav and his family members, as well as bureaucrats in the Bihar government. There are a number of fodder scam cases and Lalu Yadav has been convicted in two, today being the second conviction.

The first conviction had come in 2013 and it was called the Chaibasa treasury case. The 2013 conviction had held both Lalu Yadav and Jagannath Mishra, along with others, guilty of fraudulent transfer of money from the government exchequer and falsification of records in connection with the Rs 900 crore fodder scam.

Interestingly, the now questionable institution of the CAG, under then head TN Chaturvedi, had played a crucial role in figuring out a possible embezzlement from Bihar Treasury, which started from 1985 onwards and went on for a decade. There were false expense reports and delays in submissions, and the cumulative transfers amounted to Rs 900 crore approximately.

Lalu Yadav’s conviction in 2013 plucked him out of active politics and contesting elections, even though he had won a landslide election 2000 Bihar Assembly polls. Installing wife Rabri Devi as the Bihar CM, Lalu continued to pull the strings, until in 2005, Nitish Kumar upstaged the RJD maestro. But Lalu had been assigned the railway ministry in the crucial UPA era, as a reward for RJD’s staunch loyalty to the Sonia Gandhi-led coalition of secular parties, with Manmohan Singh as the prime minister.

In fact, the new era of younger politicians - Rahul Gandhi in Congress and Lalu’s firebrand son Tejashwi Yadav in RJD - has seen the same bonhomie being forged that the RJD icon and the “leader of the downtrodden” as many, including BJP leader and Bollywood star Shatrughan Sinha call him, had shared with Sonia Gandhi.

Now, with Lalu’s conviction in the second fodder scam, the taint of corruption might upset the game for Congress. The grand old party has freshly emerged “ clean” in the wake of the shocking 2G verdict, which held no one guilty, and particularly gave a clean chit to former PM Manmohan Singh.  

However, the guilty verdict for Lalu Yadav restores faith in the Indian institution as the series of acquittals in landmark cases that had shaped the corruption narrative in the past few years had challenged the very idea of institutional accountability. While Lalu Prasad had expected a favourable verdict, and had gone to Ranchi, where the special CBI court was reading out its verdict, with many of his family members, particularly Tejashwi Yadav, the outcome has gone against the man often hailed as the mascot of the poor, never wavering from his secular principles.

While the quantum of punishment will be announced in January, the optics of Lalu Yadav spending the New Year in jail might send out ripples of disruption in the UPA camp. Will the newly anointed president of the Congress, riding the moral high ground during the Gujarat Assembly elections campaign, distance himself from the Lalu camp, given the implications of the fodder scam verdict?

Or, will “coalition compulsions” bind Rahul Gandhi to forge pragmatic ties with the new crop of RJD leadership, embodied in Tejashwi Yadav, based on secular politics and history of unflinching loyalty from the RJD towards the Congress?

Also read: Main challenges for Rahul Gandhi as Congress president