Modi govt weak, can fall anytime, be prepared: Lalu at RJD foundation day event

The RJD chief, without naming Nitish and his flip-flops, said, “We have never compromised with our core ideology. We became the single largest party in 2020 Assembly polls and were a whisker away from power.”

Responding to Lalu’s remarks, Union Minister Nityanand Rai, using the colloquial Hindi phrase “Mungeri Lal ke hasin sapne”, said the RJD chief was hallucinating. “People have voted for Modi, who is now serving a third term. Under his leadership and guided by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the NDA in Bihar will continue to defeat the opposition, which was disgraced during RJD’s rule,” Rai said.

In his speech, Tejashwi asked the Bihar CM to get the state’s quota cap raise included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to provide it legal immunity. The Patna High Court recently scrapped the Bihar government’s move to raise the reservation ceiling from 50% to 65%.

Asking Nitish Kumar to be assertive with the Central government, the former Deputy CM said, “We were amused to see the JD(U) pass a resolution on Bihar’s special status category demand. Now that Nitish Kumar is a major stakeholder in Delhi and the Modi government is somehow dependent on him, Nitish ji should grant Bihar special category status and ensure that the Bihar quota cap is put under the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to give it legal cover. Nitish Kumar should no longer demand or beg for it.”

On his party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections, Tejashwi said, “Even though we won only four seats, our vote share went up by nine percentage points and we outperformed our opponents in 55 Assembly segments in comparison to only 16 in the last Lok Sabha polls. There are many Assembly seats in which we were behind our opponents by only 2,000 to 3,000 votes.”

Tejashwi also took on the Nitish Kumar government over the recent NEET-UG paper leak, the collapse of at least 10 bridges in the last fortnight and the alleged deterioration in the law-and-order situation. “But the government is reacting as if I have done all these things. They blamed me for the NEET-UG paper leak and they are now blaming me for bridge collapses as well. If such is the case, come and arrest me. But it sounds so ludicrous. If I was the rural works minister for 17 months, the NDA held it for 17 years. Let the Nitish government come out with a complete fact sheet on which bridge was sanctioned and opened on which day,” said the RJD leader.

Tejashwi also brought up the RJD’s jobs pitch, talking about the government vacancies filled in the 18 months that the party was in power in Bihar along with the JD(U). “We played a key role in conducting the Bihar caste survey. Now if it (the decision to raise the quota cap) is not put in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution, several people from OBC, EBC and SC-ST groups will be deprived of jobs when government vacancies are next filled,” said the former Deputy CM, alleging that the BJP had always been against “raising the reservation limit”. He appealed to people to support the Mahagathbandhan in the Assembly polls and vote out a “tired government”.

Meanwhile, JD(U) national working president Sanjay Kumar Jha, who visited Patna for the first time since taking over the post on Thursday, said Nitish would be a “much bigger force in the 2025 polls”. Asking people not to write off the Bihar CM, Jha said, “We will win more seats in 2025 than we did in 2010 (206 out of 243). Tiger abhi zinda hai (the tiger is alive).”