The government has served notices on three former ministers and an MLA, asking them to vacate their bungalows at the earliest.

The former ministers, who have been asked to vacate their ministerial bungalows, include former education minister Brishen Patel, former public health engineering minister Mahachandra Prasad Singh and former information technology minister Shaheed Ali Khan and Karakat MLA Rajeshwar Raj.

All these former ministers and Raj are from the Jitan Ram Manjhi camp. They revolted against chief minister Nitish Kumar in February.

Attacking the government's move, former chief minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) chief patron Manjhi said: 'The government serving notice on former ministers and an MLA to vacate their house is a revengeful attitude of the chief minister.'

On being asked whether he too had been asked to vacate his 1 Aney Marg residence, Manjhi said: 'I have no problem in vacating 1 Aney Marg but the state government should provide me the bungalow of the former chief minister.'

He also said that even if he vacated 1 Aney Marg, Nitish was not going to shift there immediately. Heaping a slur of untouchability on Nitish, Manjhi said: 'He (Nitish Kumar) will like to have the bungalow renovated because a Mahadalit (Manjhi) has lived here. It will take at least six months to make 1 Aney Marg livable for Nitish.'

Admitting that the building construction department had served notices on the former ministers and an MLA to vacate their official bungalows, Shaligram Prasad, the undersecretary of the department, said: 'On the directions of the government, the department has served notices on the former ministers to vacate their bungalows, as they have already overstayed there by more than a month. They were entitled to reside on the said premises for only one month after ceasing to be ministers.'

The tenures of Mahachandra Prasad Singh, Shaheed Ali Khan and Brishen Patel as ministers ended on February 20, the day when Manjhi resigned as chief minister.

The official of the building construction department added that according to the rules, only ministers are entitled to get accommodation in bungalows, while MLAs and MLCs are provided flats.

Shaheed Ali Khan said: 'I have been staying at the 7 Polo Road residence since 2005. The bungalow was allotted to me when I was MLA but the same house was later upgraded as a ministerial bungalow.'

Khan, who received the notice on Friday, said: 'If the government forcefully evicts me from my house, I have no other option but to live in a tent opposing Nitish's directive.'

It may be noted that similar notices were issued to former BJP ministers - Ashwini Kumar Choubey, Chandramohan Rai, Giriraj Singh, Prem Kumar, Satya Narayan Arya, Sukhada Pandey, Ramadhar Singh and Janardan Singh Sigriwal - in August 2013, when the JDU broke ties with the NDA. However, many of these former ministers are still living at their government bungalows despite notices from the building construction department to vacate the bungalows.