The Nitish Kumar government in Bihar is headed by a “tired” Chief Minister and run by his ally BJP through “remote control”, alleged leader of the opposition Tejashwi Yadav on Friday on the floor of the state assembly.
The RJD leader said this while participating in the debate on the budget presented earlier this week by Deputy CM Tarkishor Prasad who also holds the finance portfolio.
In an acerbic speech that lasted for nearly an hour, Yadav repeatedly used the adjective “thake hue” (tired) for the 71-year-old Chief Minister Nitish Kumar whom he accused of being out of depth, and asserted that he was “only repeating what the people can be heard saying on the streets”.
Tearing into the NDA which has ruled Bihar for the most part since 2005, the former Deputy CM questioned why the state still had more than 50 per cent of its population living below the poverty line.
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He also ridiculed the government for making repeated demands for special category status and wondered where the hitch was given that the chief minister’s JD(U) is also a partner in the BJP government at the Centre.
With a rhetorical flourish, Yadav asked, “From whom are you demanding special status? From US President Joe Biden or Russian President Vladimir Putin?” He alleged that while Nitish Kumar has been trumpeting the state’s budget increasing from a few thousand crores of rupees before he took over to more than two lakh crores of rupees, but a large part of the outlay often remained unutilized.
He also coined a term “March loot” to assert that by the end of every financial year, there was a scramble for misappropriation of funds and charged the state government with having adopted a “prismatic model of governance” wherein work was often stuck because of lack of coordination between departments and no accountability was fixed.
The RJD leader, whose father and founding president Lalu Prasad is the chief minister’s arch-rival, left the JD(U) fuming by uttering “RCP tax”, a term he has been using to refer to a key aide of Nitish Kumar who is currently a member of the Union cabinet.
When the JD(U) MLAs protested, Yadav deftly countered: “I have taken no names. I have said nothing unparliamentary. If you are confused, let me explain that by RCP I mean Reserve, Commission and Privilege”.
He also wryly added: “It was not me who had made a claim of Rs 100 crore coming into the party coffers within just a fortnight”, an obvious reference to a recent claim of state JD(U) president Umesh Kushwaha.
Yadav peppered his address with many verses of well-known poets, making Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha wonder, at one point of time, as to who was preparing the speeches.
The RJD leader also came out with an improvised slogan “double engine Sarkar ne kamal kar diya, garib ko aur garib, amir ko malamal kar diya” (the NDA government has worked wonders, the rich have become richer, the poor have turned poorer). The young leader bristled when the treasury benches objected to his reading out from a CAG report which was, at present, being reviewed by the Public Accounts Committee of the state.
“You have a problem even with findings of a constitutional body. Then why don’t you throw away this report, get it deleted from the records”, said Yadav. Yadav ended his speech by reciting a suggestive, invidious parable which, according to him, summed up the situation in the state. “There was an ageing king, unable to run the affairs of governance with whom his trusted aides had got fed up as he was not ready to relinquish power. When some of his associates, who were privy to his wrongdoings, tried to blackmail him, he let them run the show remaining on the throne as a nominal ruler”, said Yadav.
“But this led to chaos all around. The masses rose in revolt and stormed the palace. The king told his powerful associates that he was going to become a Buddhist monk and they should consider going to the Himalayas, leaving the nitty-gritty of governance to the next person who sat on the throne”, added Yadav, evoking applause.
