A day after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar explained his position before the media on why he parted ways with the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal, Mr. Prasad on Tuesday rebutted his charges and alleged that Mr. Kumar not only “betrayed” his faith in him but also connived with the BJP to lodge cases against him and his family.
He was addressing journalists at his 10, Circular Road residence.
Mr. Prasad also said Mr. Kumar had been winning elections with his support and the JD(U) performed poorly in elections it contested earlier on its own.
“Nitish Kumar knew about the CBI raid at my house...he connived with the BJP to lodge cases against me and my family…how can the CBI raid a Deputy Chief Minister’s residence without taking the Chief Minister into confidence?”, charged the RJD chief.
A day before the CBI raid, Mr. Kumar went to Rajgir and fell ill. “Whenever Nitish Kumar falls ill, it means he is about to take some dangerous steps”, Mr. Prasad said.
Recalling how Mr. Kumar, along with his chief strategist Prashant Kishor, had met him in Delhi for favour when the then CM Jitan Ram Manjhi had refused to toe his line and how he had bowed down to him to become the Chief Minister after the last Assembly poll, Mr. Prasad said, “It was my mistake to trust him…this man is not trustworthy and I’ll never make an alliance with him again.”
“He is a political Paltu Ram”, quipped Mr. Prasad while adding that, “when he saw Tejashwi Yadav’s work and the all-round appreciation for him he got alarmed and did the palti (somersault).”
“Nitish Kumar said he doesn’t believe in caste base and caste base should not be confused with mass base…then why had he attended the Kurmi caste rally in 1994 in Patna?... Why did he appoint bureaucrats of his caste even from outside the State?”, asked Mr. Prasad.
According to him, “Nitish Kumar’s political character has been thoroughly exposed and the neutral writers of the country have been writing about it.”
Taking a dig at Mr. Kumar’s alliance with the BJP, Mr. Prasad said, “even BJP president Amit Shah in Lucknow said that it was Nitish Kumar who broke the alliance with the RJD and the BJP didn’t go to him.”
“Now Mr. Kumar should wear saffron robes and chant Jai Shri Ram,” he said.
On Mr. Kumar’s oft-repeated claim of zero tolerance to corruption, the RJD chief asked, “What about your close aides like Lallan Saraf and RCP Sinha who make collection? Earlier, there was an Income-Tax raid on Lallan Saraf’s residence and RCP Sinha had gone underground fearing an I-T raid.”
A former U.P. cadre IAS officer, Mr. Sinha has been a close aide of Mr. Kumar for long and now is a JD(U) Rajya Sabha MP.
Mr. Prasad also gave details of how his party and the JD(U) had performed in the 2014 Parliamentary elections when they contested separately.
“My party got 4 seats while Nitish Kumar’s party JD(U) won just 2 seats…the Assembly constituency-wise results later showed that my party candidates were first runner-up in 34 seats while they stood second in 116 seats, whereas JD(U) candidates were first runner-up in 19 and came second in just 20 seats.”
“Even in the 2015 Assembly poll I gave up more traditional RJD seats to accommodate JD(U) candidates and still Nitish Kumar says RJD votes were not transferred to his party,” Mr. Prasad said.