Going to jail and coming out of it on bail has become a routine for former Bihar Chief Minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav. And going by the number of fodder scam cases he figures in and is likely to figure in in the days to come, the embattled Rashtriya Janata Dal chief is destined to stay in the jails of Jharkhand and Bihar for many years of his life.

Mr Yadav was imprisoned for the fifth time after a Ranchi court denied him bail on 26 November in the Central Bureau of Investigation�s regular case 47A/96 related to fraudulent withdrawal of over Rs 182 crore from the Doranda treasury.

Volumewise, this is the biggest case in the Rs 1,000-crore fodder scam, having 110 accused. Despite the jail sojourn being routine for Mr Yadav, his mahayatra to the CBI court at Ranchi, escorted by vehicles by the thousands, on the 350-km stretch of the Patna-Ranchi road was unique in many ways. To the dismay of his political opponents, he drew a huge crowd in Bihar and Jharkhand. Some observers interpret the masses� response as a dissipation of the people�s anger aroused against him in the initial stages of the CBI investigation into the loot of undivided Bihar�s treasuries. The crowd helped Mr Yadav prove that his charisma has its appeal among the masses. It also helped him keep his flock together in the hours of crisis. This is a sad development by all accounts. It is likely to encourage tainted politicians and mafiosi to cultivate their sins without fear of the law. This will also reinforce their belief that the loot of even Rs 1,000 crore from the exchequer of a poor state like Bihar will not affect their prospects. And thus, it will open the floodgates for more loots and scams. After he was named an accused in the fodder scam in 1997, Mr Yadav suffered an erosion in his popularity. This is evident from the fact that his party lost heavily at the hands of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha elections in 1998 and 1999. In the Assembly polls of 2000, the RJD won just 120 seats against the 167 the party bagged in 1995.

But the RJD chief is believed to have regained his lost ground, ironically, through this mahayatra. On witnessing the response, Mr Yadav�s opponents within the RJD are lying low. And there is no immediate threat to the government led by his wife Rabri Devi, despite his stay in prison under an �alien� (BJP) government in Jharkhand for sometime.

Neither the court nor the CBI is responsible for the re-emergence of the tainted RJD chief as a hero. The Supreme Court has been consistent in compelling him to surrender before the trial court by rejecting the vociferous pleadings on his behalf that the CBI had been �framing� him in �similar cases time and again�.

And if observed in relative terms, the CBI team under the stewardship of the agency�s Additional Director (East), UN Biswas, has not performed badly. There are 62 cases in the fodder scam. And Dr Biswas�s team has virtually completed the investigation into what the former CBI Director, Joginder Singh, described as the �world�s biggest scam� in a little over five years. The CBI has submitted chargesheets in about 70 per cent of the cases and its request for the sanction of prosecution in the remaining cases are pending at various levels of the state and the Union governments. The fodder scam probe has been far quicker in comparison to the Bofors and other scams of lesser magnitude. Still, it is not far to seek what caused the people to forget their anger against Mr Yadav to accord him a hero�s reception on his way to jail.

Leaders of the BJP and its allies had launched a campaign against the fodder scam by filing a public interest petition in the High Court which had handed over the case to the CBI for investigation in 1996. National Democratic Alliance leaders got the opportunity to project themselves as the �vehicle of a crusade� against corruption in Bihar and Mr Yadav as a �thief of the first order� after the CBI found him and many of his party colleagues �guilty� in the fodder scam.

But it did not take much time for the NDA leaders to expose themselves. The NDA lost its �crusader�s image� after the people saw its senior leaders like former BJP president Bangaru Laxman accepting bribe in the Tehelka tapes and the Central government shielding the likes of him by not taking action against them.

The Tehelka expos� established the complicity of senior NDA leaders in the fake defence deal, then the UTI controversy erupted. The Centre�s vacillation in dealing with the tainted leaders have made corruption a non-issue in Bihar. This has weakened the NDA�s battle against Mr Yadav. The leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Sushil Kumar Modi, and others gunning for Mr Yadav for his �involvement in the loot and corruption� found it hard to explain why the Centre was soft towards its own tainted leaders. Defence Minister George Fernandes cried hoarse over the �loot� and �corruption� that Mr Yadav �symbolised� after the CBI framed the RJD chief in the fodder cases. His Samata Party general secretary, Lallan Singh, was a petitioner in the fodder cases. But the NDA has so far failed to explain why Mr Fernandes resigned as defence minister after the Tehelka disclosures or why he re-joined the ministry even before the Venkataswami Commission probing the controversy could submit its report.

Should these leaders not face investigations because they are either the �devotees� of Lord Rama or are in an alliance with the �devotees� of Lord Rama? And should Mr Yadav be made to make a jail his home away from home because he has no �devotees� of Lord Rama to protect him like Mr Laxman and Mr Fernandes have been protected? The NDA leaders� attack against the Laloo-Rabri regime lost its bite after the Centre failed to bring its tainted leaders to justice. They failed to prove that they were different from the likes of Mr Yadav. And this has enabled Mr Yadav to regain his lost ground.

The biggest demagogue of the era that he is, he went to town shouting: �The whole world saw Bangaru counting the currency notes received as bribe...nobody has seen me receiving bribe so far�but Bangaru is enjoying power and I am being sent to jail.�

The BJP leaders could not counter him. Still, it would be a cruel joke on Bihar if the guilty in the fodder scam go unpunished. There is a bundle of evidence to prove that Rs 1,000 crore had been siphoned off systematically from the state treasuries by those who were supposed to guard them. It is a blatant lie if Mr Yadav says he had not been aware of what was going on. The then Animal Husbandry Minister, Ramjivan Singh, had written to the then Chief Minister, Laloo Yadav, and the then Chief Secretary on 17 August 1990 asking for a CBI probe in his department. In his letter, Mr Singh had cited the auditor-general�s report alleging that bulls and buffaloes had been transported on scooters and that money had been withdrawn from the treasuries for the transportation cost.

But the government, instead of ordering a CBI probe, stripped Mr Ramjivan Singh of his ministerial powers. The loot continued in full knowledge of senior leaders and bureaucrats ruling the state.