Sharad denies opposing Advani's arrest in 1990, says Lalu lying

New Delhi, Nov 13 (UNI) Janata Dal (United) President Sharad Yadav today charged Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Prasad with ''fraud with the history'' by alleging that as minister in the United Front government he had told the latter not to arrest L K Advani during his Rath Yatra in October, 1990.

The JD(U) leader said that the allegation made by Mr Lalu Prasad in a recent interview was ''a damn lie and a fraud with the history.'' He claimed that the RJD leader made the allegation in the backdrop of defeat of his party in the recent parliamentary byelections in Bihar.

Pointing out that this was the second successive defeat for the RJD after the loss in assembly polls in February and November last year, Mr Sharad Yadav claimed that this has made Mr Lalu Prasad ''nervous'' and he ''concocted a false story that I had asked him not to arrest L K Advani.'' ''He thinks with the help of this lie, he will save the support base from moving away from him. I did not bother, when he made this allegation just before voting in Nalanda and Bhagalpur. I thought it was a pre-election gimmick of a discredited leader and no one would believe him. He has repeated that allegation again. Now I find myself duty bound to correct the things,'' Mr Sharad Yadav said.

He claimed that he was the first person as the minister in the United Front Government who said that L K Advani should be arrested in Bihar. ''It was the central United Front Government which was at stake as the BJP leaders had threatened to withdraw support to it if Mr Advani was arrested. So, the decision to arrest Advani was taken at the central level with me stressing that he be arrested in Bihar as there was a lot of tension in Uttar Pradesh at that time. Mr Lalu Prasad arrested Mr Advani on the direction of the central government-especially me.'' ''I had not only asked Lalu to arrest Advani before entering into Uttar Pradesh, but also assigned the task to persuade Lalu to Nitish Kumar, Shivanand Tiwari, Ranjan Prasad Yadav, Brishin Patel, Lalan Singh and Jagadanand Singh. Lalu arrested Mr Advani at my behest.'' Terming Lalu Yadav as ''a habitual liar,'' the JD(U) President said that when the former was made the Chief Minister of Bihar he had declared that indulging in corruption was equal to eating the flesh of cow but the whole world knows about the fodder scam. He also pointed out that Lalu had once said that Bihar would be divided on his dead body but Jharkhand was formed after the division of Bihar and Lalu engineered the division only to save the government led by his wife.

''Lalu Yadav is not only a great liar, but also a great cheat. He has cheated the poor people of Bihar. It was I who made him the CM of Bihar,'' he claimed and said that ''Janata Dal gave Lalu the chair of Chief Ministership. But he deceived the Dal. In 1997 he engineered a split in Janata Dal to perpetuate his family rule. The Janata Dal break was not sufficient for his lust of power, so he broke Bihar and manipulated majority,'' he said.

''Lalu got the support of the movement, but he stabbed in the back of the movement. The poor people of Bihar have high expectations from him, but he decieved them by destroying Bihar. Now his support base is totally disillusioned with him. The recent debacle of his party in Nalanda and Bhagalpur has sealed his future. Now he thinks by raising the issue of Advani's arrest in the last week of October, 1990 and spreading a lie about my role during the period, he can regain his lost ground in Bihar,'' Mr Sharad Yadav said.

He denied that this clarification on Advani's arrest issue was indicative of any distance between the Janata Dal (U) and BJP and said that he was doing it just to present ''historically correct facts in front of people.'' UNI AJ RP DS1622