First came the setback in Assembly bypolls and then the Khagaria carnage. The two events have forced Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to put his big land reform plans on the backburner. His deputy Sushil Kumar Modi said as much on Monday at a function here to felicitate BJP’s senior leader Kailashpati Mishra on his 87th birthday. “There is no such recommendation by the Bandopadhyaya Commission to give the land right to the tillers....This is a concerted effort by the Opposition to create confusion among the common man which needs to be corrected,” Modi told reporters.

The state ruling combine’s concern is natural. With Assembly elections just 14 months away, Kumar can ill afford to hand over the initiative to the Opposition. Upbeat after the September bypoll results, the RJD and LJP have already tasted blood. Now, in the aftermath of the carnage, in which 16 persons belonging to the OBCs were killed by Mushahars belonging to the EBCs or what is popularly called Mahadalits in Icharua village of Khagaria district, Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP is going from one village to another saying that Kumar’s Mahadalit politics has further divided Bihar’s already caste-ridden society. Paswan had earlier slammed Kumar’s “political opportunism” by saying that earlier it was upper castes versus lower castes, now it is OBCs versus EBCs.

Almost seven months after taking the reins of the state in November 2005, Kumar ventured into the land reform arena, which so far has proved a tricky affair for successive governments. The Chief Minister set up a land reform commission on June 16, 2006 to lend credence to his policy for the uplift of the poorest among poor and put D Bandopadhyaya, who scripted the West Bengal’s Operation Burgah (land reform movement), at the helm.

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