If two wrongs could make one right, then the unfolding political drama in Bihar could be justified. With the new Bihar state legislative assembly elections barely months away, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has suddenly become active. The entire Lalu Prasad Yadav family was summoned and questioned recently in the Land for Job scam.

Lalu Prasad Yadav was not the only minister accused of corruption during the decade-long Manmohan Singh government at the Centre. The likes of P. Chidambaram and A. Raja are breathing free, while an impression is being created that Lalu and his family are more corrupt than others.

The timing of the ED crackdown on Lalu and his family is questionable. There is no denying that the Land for Job scam took place rather blatantly during Lalu’s tenure as the country’s railway minister between 2004 and 2009. Allegedly, jobs were offered to hundreds in exchange for the job seekers’ families transferring land ownership to the Yadav family. Suddenly, they amassed a huge land bank to the extent that his two sons, Tej Pratap and Tejashwi, had the audacity to start construction of the LaRa Mall, named after their parents Lalu and Rabri, in the heart of Bihar’s capital city, Patna, on land procured through questionable means.

The scam took........

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