PATNA: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav on Thursday said his party would move the Supreme Court over the Bihar governor calling Nitish Kumar to form the government, though his party had the numbers and should have been given the first opportunity to do so. He said in Ranchi that he will approach top lawyer Ram Jethmalani on moving the court.
Yadav attacked Nitish Kumar for leaving Bihar’s grand alliance and taking oath as chief minister with the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) support, saying the developments were a “fixed match of BJP-RSS” and that it was the “last phase” of Kumar in politics.
Yadav, in Ranchi, minutes after his appearance in a special CBI court in connection with a fodder scam case, said, “Narendra Modi and Amit Shah were upset for a long time as they knew my strong public support base cannot be shaken. Despite giving no trouble to Nitish in the government, he indulged in fraud.”
Claiming that Nitish Kumar cheated the people and “stabbed a knife on the back of the poor, backward and Dalit people”, a smiling Yadav said he was not worried by the developments. “We (RJD) are looking forward to the rally in August that is being attended by many leaders, including Mayawati and Mamata Banerjee, to set the stage against BJP,” he added. “I always knew that he (Nitish Kumar) was in touch with BJP and got all the cases by CBI, ED and Income Tax registered against me and my family members. He worked secretly with Sushil Modi,” said Yadav.
He accused governor Kesari Nath Tripathy of wrongdoing for his decision to invite the JD(U) and BJP to form the government instead of giving RJD, the single largest party in the Assembly with 80 seats, the first opportunity to do so. “Nitish has no confidence in JD(U) MLAs and that is why they shifted the swearing-in time from 5 pm to 10 am. MLAs were kept in wrongful confinement,” said Yadav.
“We are preparing to move the Supreme Court. I am going to speak to Ram Jethmalani a few minutes later about this,” he added. Yadav said Kumar is a “murder accused” under Section 302 and that he decided to ally with the BJP in “a hurried manner” after learning that the pending murder case against him could be revived and ruin his political future.
Yadav said, “A court in Barh took cognisance of the case of murder of Sitaram Singh in 1991. Nitish Kumar also admitted in his poll affidavits that there is this case of murder against him.”
Midnight march
Earlier, shaken by Nitish Kumar’s surprise move to resign as chief minister, top RJD leaders led by embattled deputy CM Tejaswi Yadav made a post-midnight march to Raj Bhawan and demanded that RJD be given opportunity to form the government. Six RJD leaders met the governor and said that since RJD was the single largest party with 80 MLAs in the assembly, the party should be invited first to form the government.