Patna, June 2: The big guns of Bihar are booming again.

If Lalu Prasad slammed the Nitish Kumar government yesterday for its proposed ?Greater Patna? project, today it was the turn of Ram Vilas Paswan to describe the NDA dispensation as a ?failure on all fronts?.

Criticism, though, was not all that came from the two heavyweights.

While the railway minister yesterday laid the foundation stone for a 150-bed hospital near Patna junction, his counterpart in the chemicals and fertilisers ministry today announced the opening of a National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (Niper) centre at Hajipur.

The institute, spread over 100 acres, will cost Rs 150 crore. The Bihar government has agreed to allot the land.

Coming down hard on the Bihar government, Paswan said the state?s rulers have failed to check crime, ensure adequate power and water supply and address other issues of public concern. ?We had welcomed the change in government and given chief minister Nitish Kumar six months to show results, but it failed miserably,? he held.

The Lok Janshakti Party has decided to organise a rally on August 9 at Gandhi Maidan here to ?expose? the failures of the government.

?The NDA regime is no better than its predecessor and we will highlight its failure on August 9,? he said. Paswan claimed that 2,575 people have been killed in the past six months. He, however, did not mention the source of the ?bloated? figure.

Paswan said the Japanese delegation, which held talks with the government on the proposed Indo-Asian institute in Nalanda a few days ago, had expressed ?security? concerns over last month?s Gowachak massacre in which nine persons were killed. Paswan also reminded Nitish of the ?unfulfilled? promise of appointing 25,000 primary and 10,000 Urdu teachers.

The LJP chief targeted Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad by wanting to know how and why the railway hospital was ?shifted? to Patna when it was originally ?planned? to come up at Hajipur, his constituency.

Yesterday, Lalu Prasad had criticised the government?s Greater Patna project saying it would rob farmers of their land and benefit only the construction mafia.

The chief minister reacted to the allegations by saying the Opposition was under a ?compulsion to criticise the government?. But at the same time, he invited suggestions from all parties to draft a roadmap for a ?new? Bihar.