PATNA: After failing to provide convincing explanations on allegations levelled by the Opposition BJP about amassing huge benami property, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s two minister sons are now in for more trouble as a PIL was filed in Patna High Court seeking their disqualification as MLAs.
The PIL, filed by Manibhushan Pratap Sengar, a lawyer in the high court, also prayed that a CBI enquiry be ordered into the methods used by the two ministers - deputy chief minister Tejaswi Yadav and his elder brother and health minister Tej Pratap Yadav - to acquire huge tracts of prime land in Patna and elsewhere in Bihar.
“The PIL filed in Patna High Court against the two ministers seeks that their election as MLAs be declared null and void for allegedly concealing property details in the affidavits they submitted to Election Commission of India while filing their nomination papers,” said Lalit Kishore, the principal advocate general at Patna High Court. The PIL has made the two ministers and the state government respondents in the petition, he added.
Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi had recently levelled serious allegations about Lalu Prasad Yadav’s family acquiring prime land worth crores of rupees by misuse of official position and in quid pro quo manner.
Tej Pratap Yadav, 28, and Tejaswi Yadav, 27, are both first-time MLAs of RJD, the biggest partner in Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led three-party ‘grad alliance’ government that was formed after the Assembly polls in November 2015.
Meanwhile, Sushil Kumar Modi on Thursday shot off a letter to CM Nitish Kumar giving details of the two-acre land in Aurangabad owned by Tej Pratap Yadav and the automobile distribution company owned by him functioning from there. In the letter, Modi demanded an inquiry into the methods used to acquire this land and immediate sacking of Tej Pratap Yadav as a cabinet minister.
Lalu Prasad Yadav and RJD leaders have routinely dubbed Modi’s allegations as “entirely baseless and framed on already well-known facts”. They have claimed that all rules were followed in acquisition of the landed properties. They have, however, not answered allegations on why ownership of these properties were not mentioned in the election-time affidavits of the two ministers.