Bihar CM Nitish Kumar asserts he shaped Lalu Prasad Yadav’s career, escalating political tensions with RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav
New Delhi: The Bihar Assembly witnessed a verbal exchange between chief minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav during Mr Kumar’s post-Budget speech on Tuesday. In his speech, Mr Kumar asserted that he played a “key role” in shaping the political career of Tejashwi's father, former Bihar CM Lalu Prasad Yadav. When Nitish Kumar rose to speak in the Assembly about the development work done by the NDA government, Tejashwi Yadav interrupted his speech.
“What was there in Bihar earlier? It was I who made your (Tejashwi Yadav) father what he became. Even the people from your caste were asking me why I was doing this, but I still supported him," the chief minister hit back.
Amid huge uproar by the Opposition, Mr Kumar went on: “You don't know anything. When Lalu Yadav was opposing the separation of Extremely Backward Classes and Backward Classes in Bihar, I said it was wrong, and I opposed him at that time.”
Earlier, Tejashwi Yadav had taken a dig at Nitish Kumar by saying that nobody can do better mimicry than Nitish and that the Bihar CM was making different faces in the Assembly. Terming the Budget “inflated” and drafted with “ink dipped in lies”, Tejashwi Yadav said: “It is strange that despite no revenue generation, the size of the Budget keeps increasing. The figure of Rs 3.71 lakh-crore is highly inflated. The Budget papers seem to have been written with ink dipped in lies. They could have made it Rs 5 lakh-crores”.
