Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad on Tuesday lashed out at Bihar chief minister and Janata Dal (United) president Nitish Kumar over the disqualification of JDU Rajya Sabha MPs Sharad Yadav and Ali Anwar.
“It has become a trait of Nitish Kumar to use people and dump them. He did that to me when he approached me for an alliance after biting the dust in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and later, ditched us to join hands with the BJP,” he told reporters in Patna.
Kumar, Prasad said, had meted out a similar treatment to Yadav and Ali, who stood by the JDU chief’s side when he was struggling to get a foothold in Bihar politics. “He (Kumar) has humiliated them by getting them disqualified from the Rajya Sabha,” the RJD supremo said. “But the people of Bihar are watching. A time will come when they will ask what was the crime of these two persons (Yadav and Anwar), for which they were given such a treatment, and Nitish Kumar will have a tough time coming up with an answer.”
The JDU had sought the disqualification of the two MPs on the ground that they had attended a rally organized by the opposition parties, including the RJD, despite instructions to the contrary. Bihar JDU president Bashishtha Narayan Singh said, “Sharad Yadav had openly been defying the party’s directions, which amounted to voluntarily renouncing the party. He has nobody else but himself to blame for what he is facing.”
Yadav and Anwar had sided with the opposition in Bihar after Kumar quit the Grand Alliance, also comprising the Congress and the RJD, and re-joined the BJP-led NDA to form government in the state.
A communication regarding the two Rajya Sabha MPs’ disqualification from the House was issued by Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu, who is also the chairman of the Upper House of Parliament, late last night.