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| MAHAMAYA PRASAD SINHA (1 MAY 1909-3 MAY 1987) |
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| KRISHNA BALLABH SAHAY (31 DECEMBER 1898-3 JUNE 1974) |
The Kayastha
community in Bihar has produced two leaders who went on to become the Chief
Minister of the State- Krishna Ballabh Sahay (02.10.1963-05.03.1967), followed
by Mahamaya Prasad Sinha (05.03.1967-28.01.1968). It is incredulous that no
other Kayastha leader could rise to this stature, irrespective of their
political dispensation, after the exit of these two stalwarts. The present blog
traces the political relationship between these two Kayastha Chief
Ministers.
Krishna Ballabh Sahay found
himself under tremendous pressure during the whole of 1946-47. This pressure
was exerted from within Congress and a handful of zamindars owing allegiance to
the Congress who wanted K. B. Sahay to go slow on the process of legislation
for zamindari abolition. Even Dr Rajendra Prasad was indifferent towards K. B.
Sahay. However, two incidents took place in 1947 which helped to ward off the
pressure from K. B. Sahay’s shoulder and shifted it elsewhere- the first was
the allocation of 200 acres of land at Sathi in Bettiah in favour of the then
Excise Commissioner R. P. N. Sahi by the Revenue Board and the other was the ‘molasses
permits’ issued by the same Excise Commissioner to some of the people owing
allegiance to one or the other Congress leader. Molasses is a by-product of the
sugar industry. It is used in distilleries to prepare liquor and is also mixed
with tobacco to prepare hukkah. As per the provisions of the Bihar
Molasses Act, 90% of the molasses was supplied to Government distilleries while
the sugar factories were free to trade the rest 10% of the molasses. The control
rate of molasses was four annas per maund (1 maund= 40 ser/kg roughly) while it
sold at Rs 5/- per maund in the open market. Hence a permit to lift molasses
from the sugar factory entitled the beneficiary of a profit of Rs 4.75/- per
maund without any effort whatsoever.
On 9th
October 1947 when K. B. Sahay rose to reply to a short-notice question by
Hon’ble members Harinath Mishra and Gouri Shankar Dalmia regarding the beneficiaries
of the Molasses Permits’ issued by the Excise Commissioner R. P. N. Sahi, no
one had expected that the reply would create a furore whose rumblings would
reverberate far and wide. K. B. Sahay
gave away the names of 93 beneficiaries of which 23 were connected with one or
the other Congress leader. One of the beneficiaries Chandrika Prasad Singh was
shown as ‘Care of’ Mahamaya Prasad Sinha as per the statement provided by the
Excise Commissioner Rai Bahadur R. P. N. Sahi to the Minister. In another case,
a permit was issued in favour of the son of late Mathura Prasad. Mathura Prasad
was the personal secretary of Dr Rajendra Prasad.
As usual ‘The Indian
Nation’ jumped on this scoop and held K. B. Sahay responsible for the mess. Almost
immediately the Congress High Command went into damage control mode. Pandit
Jawaharlal Nehru asked his Home Minister Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel to
investigate the matter. As the investigation proceeded it unfolded the actual
picture. It became amply clear that there was no role of Krishna Ballabh Sahay
or his Ministry in the whole episode. The permits were issued by the Excise
Commissioner R. P. N. Sahi in exercise to his discretionary powers without
consulting the ministry or the minister. The Excise Ministry was under the
charge of Jaglal Chaudhary who had relinquished the post over some differences
with Sri Krishna Sinha- the then Chief Minister of Bihar who asked K. B. Sahay
to look after till an alternative arrangement was made. On taking over the
Excise Ministry as its minister, Krishna Ballabh Sahay had almost immediately
withdrawn the statutory powers of the Excise Commissioner. The permits in
question pertained to a period before him having taken over the charge of the
ministry. Sardar Patel not only exonerated K. B. Sahay but praised him for the
stand taken by him. In his report, Sardar Patel vindicated the stand taken by
K. B. Sahay and accepted the justification that ‘he supplied the names since
he was bound by a private member question and he contended that he did this
with the bonafide intention of saving the fair name of Congress even at the
risk of exposing some of their friends by publishing the facts about the matter’.
(From the chapter ‘The Stormy Years’ of the book ‘K. B. Sahay-The Architect
of Agrarian Reforms in Independent India’ by the same author)
Probably Mahamaya
Prasad Sinha had not forgotten this episode. His moment of glory came 20 years
hence in 1967. Bihar was battling the worst famine in its history and its Chief
Minister was engaged in charting a course to overcome the crisis. While the
state was already on the brink, the situation was further deteriorated by the decision
of the non-gazetted employees to go on strike demanding a pay raise. Almost
simultaneously, students launched an agitation opposing the hike in fees in
colleges. Students’ agitation brought Mahamaya Prasad Sinha’s to the centre
stage who found it an opportune cause to further his political ambitions. He
had led students in agitation in 1956 when Sri Krishna Sinha was the Chief
Minister of the State. However, on that occasion, his ambition was nipped in
the bud when the then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru flew down to Patna
to address students at the Gandhi Maidan and to settle the issue. However, the
situation in 1967 was different from those in 1956. K. B. Sahay was almost alone in his fight to
resurrect the state in the famine conditions and not only his adversaries such
as Dr Ram Manohar Lohia, Madhu Limaye, Karpoori Thakur, Ramanand Tiwari,
Bhupesh Gupta etc saw an opportunity to upstage him, but even the Congress high
Command was also indifferent towards him- all due to his firebrand leadership
style that brook no nuisance and considered student’s agitation misplaced and
misconceived. K. B. Sahay strongly believed that the students should first
complete their academics before entering politics and he stubbornly maintained
this stand. Instead of giving any relaxation to students, he gave a free hand
to the administration to maintain law and order. He preferred to resign than to
order an enquiry against officers who ordered a shoot-out on students’
procession in Patna in January 1967. The political situation was ripe for Mahamaya
Prasad Sinha to exploit it who mesmerized the students with his oratory calling
students his ‘Jigar ke tukde’. He had been waiting in the wings for
years for such a moment. Mahamaya Prasad Sinha left Congress on 31st
December 1966 and along with Raja Kamakhya Narayan Singh formed the ‘Jan Kranti
Dal. In the elections in March 1967, the JKD could win only 13 seats. The
Congress once again emerged as the single largest party despite all reverses
with 128 seats- marginally short of a clear majority. However, Dr Ram Manohar
Lohia (Sanyukta Socialist Party-68), Atal Bihari Vajpayee (Bharatiya
Jansangh-26), Bhupesh Gupta (Communist Party of India-24), Madhu Limaye,
Karpoori Thakur and Ramanand Tiwary (Praja Socialist Party-18) – i.e. the left,
right, centrist and the socialists- all decided to pull down K. B. Sahay and
Congress and decided to support the JKD for the formation of the next
government. Thus Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, who had defeated K. B. Sahay from the
Patna (West) assembly constituency, was sworn in as the next Chief Minister on
5th March 1967.
K. B. Sahay was not a
leader to take things lying down- his defeat no less. He vowed to pull down
this rag-tag coalition of parties on unprincipled grounds in a year time. He
just bided his time for an opportune time. He was provided with this
opportunity by Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal- a leader no less ambitious than
Mahamaya Prasad Sinha. Dr Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal had deserted Congress and become
a ‘socialist’ under Dr Lohia to further his political ambition. Hence when
Mahamaya Prasad Sinha became Chief Minister, he insisted he makes him a
minister, ignoring the principle laid down by his mentor Dr Lohia that a Member of the Parliament would not be made a minister in the State Ministry. This
created a rift between the mentor and his disciple and Dr Bindeshwari Prasad
Mandal walked out of the Sanyukta Socialist Party to make his party that came
to be known as the ‘Shoshit Dal’. Krishna Ballabh Sahay supported him to pull
down the Mahamaya Prasad Sinha’s Ministry. Dr Mandal took oath as the Chief
Minister after a brief interregnum when Satish Prasad became Chief Minister for
three days before K. B. Sahay got Dr Mandal nominated to Bihar Legislative
Council after getting a seat vacated in the Council by asking his man Parmanand
Babu to resign. Thus Mahamaya Prasad Sinha’s tenure as the Chief Minister of
Bihar came to an abrupt end. After the exit of Mahamaya Prasad Sinha in 1968,
no other Kayastha leader could become the Chief Minister of the State in
the next fifty years.
Epilogue: Mahamaya Prasad Sinha was a proven giant-killer.
In 1957, he took up the challenge of the powerful minister Mahesh Prasad Sinha
and humbled him in his hometown, Muzaffarpur. In 1967, he opposed K. B. Sahay
in Patna (West) constituency and defeated him by almost the same margin-20,000
votes- by which K. B. Sahay was elected to the Assembly in 1962 from the same
constituency. In the 1972, Assembly elections, he defeated another giant, Krishna
Kant Singh, a prominent leader of the Congress (O) in his den, Goreakothi
Assembly constituency in Saran district. In the 1977 parliamentary elections Mahamaya
Babu humbled another giant, Ramavtar Shastri of the CPI in Patna Parliamentary
Constituency.
(Sources: (i) National Archives, New Delhi, (ii) Bihar Vidhan Sabha proceedings, (iii) Lallantop, (iv) Multi-party Coalition Government in India- The Phase of non-Congressism, (v) Intra-party Conflict in the Bihar Congress- Ramashray Singh)
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