Nitish bribed MLAs to split RJD, says Lalu

Marches with 9 rebel MLAs to Bihar assembly, issues show-cause notice to 4

Patna : Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday accused Bihar CM Nitish Kumar of conspiring to split his party by bribing RJD legislators to join JDU to save his minority government.

“The Nitish Kumar government is killing democracy. It is breaking parties in Bihar,” Lalu Prasad said, adding that “Nitish Kumar gave bribes of crores of rupees to RJD legislators.” He announced that he would be meeting the governor and stage a sit-in at Raj Bhavan.

On Tuesday, 16 of the 22 RJD legislators attended a legislature party meeting at the official residence of former Bihar CM Rabri Devi. RJD leaders said four rebel legislators – party chief whip Samrat Choudhary, Raghavendra Pratap Singh, Javeb Iqbal Ansari and Akhtarul Iman – did not attend the legislature party meeting and two did not turn up as they were in their constituencies.

After the meeting, Lalu Prasad alongwith party legislators took to the streets to protest the alleged role of assembly Speaker Uday Narain Choudhary in the bid to split the RJD.

Lalu Prasad also accused Nitish Kumar of offering lucrative posts to his party legislators to defect. “Nitish Kumar is eyeing RJD legislators and offering them lucrative posts to split the party,” Lalu Prasad said. However, the RJD chief claimed that nine of his 13 legislators returned to the party and denied any split.

In events that unfolded Monday, the RJD looked headed for a split after 13 legislators said they were no longer with the party, and that they intended to join the JD-U.  But later, party leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui denied any rift, while six of the “rebels” said they were still with Lalu Prasad’s party. Late Monday night, three more RJD legislators said they were with the party.

The RJD has 22 members in the 243-member house, while the JD-U has 118 legislators.  On Tuesday, RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad said the speaker was also to be blamed.  “The speaker should have imposed the anti-defection law,” he said.  The RJD will issue show cause notice to four rebel legislators who did not attend a meeting of its legislature party.

Nitish refutes charge

Meanwhile, Bihar Cm Nitish Kumar, rejecting Lalu Yadav’s accusations said, “Lalu has been engineering a split in other parties all his life, and now, he is blaming me for the disturbances in his party.” Nitish Kumar said people can discuss technical aspects of the decision as much as they want to but as far as political developments are concerned, RJD is close to a division among its ranks.                      –AGENCIES