Tejashwi Yadav releases "charge sheet" against Nitish govt

The opposition RJD in Bihar on Wednesday attacked the Nitish Kumar government for failure to check communal tensions and charged the Chief Minister with having "surrendered" before his ally, the BJP.

Releasing a 72-page "charge sheet", the leader of the opposition in the state assembly Tejashwi Yadav also said that the less than a year-old NDA government was an "all round failure" and the state got no benefits which were promised while the BJP was acquiring power "through back door".

Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi trashed the charge sheet as a "bundle of lies."

"The double engine (allusion to the NDA being in power both at the Centre and in Bihar) has been a complete failure. The state has not got its well-deserved special status. Nor has the 1.25 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with a theatrical flourish made any difference", Yadav said.

"Kumar's promise of a Sangh-mukt Bharat has fallen flat on its face as he is now busy assisting the BJP in creating a vipaksh-mukt (bereft of opposition) Bharat", Yadav alleged.

Kumar had returned to power in the 2015 assembly elections as the Chief Ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance that comprised JD(U), RJD and Congress.

He, however, walked out of the alliance and formed a new government with the BJP in July last year following corruption cases against Yadav, who was then his deputy.

Yadav also questioned Kumar's inability to pre-empt the communal clashes that were witnessed in several districts of the state recently, alleging "groundwork for the sectarian strife had been done by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat while he was on a 10-day tour of Bihar in February".

"Moreover, reports of truckloads of swords being brought to Bihar, ahead of Ram Navami festivities, were enough indication of what was lying in store. But Kumar appears to have surrendered before the agenda of the BJP-RSS. His government is no longer run on the agenda of his seven resolves which speak about providing basic amenities to the poorest of the poor", Yadav said.

Meanwhile, in a series of scathing tweets, Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi termed the "charge sheet" as "a bundle of lies" and lambasted the RJD for "causing wastage of public money to the tune of crores of rupees by frequently disrupting the just-concluded assembly session".

PTI