Patna: Senior BJP leader Mangal Pandey on Friday termed Tejashwi Yadav's Samvidhan Bachao Nyaya Yatra a sham. He claimed that the Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly was unsuccessfully trying to garner sympathy of the people for the jail term awarded to his father.

Tejashwi will start his yatra from February 10 and it would continue till February 13. He will visit Katihar, Kishanganj, Purnea and Araria during the first leg of the yatra where he will address public meetings.

Tejashwi, who left Patna for Katihar on Friday, will use these public meetings to attack chief minister Nitish Kumar and the BJP on issues concerning the state. He is likely to raise issues concerning law and order, corruption and lack of development during the yatra.

Taking a dig at his yatra, Pandey said: "In the name of safeguarding the Constitution, Tejashwi is undertaking this yatra to garner the sympathy of the people but he should not forget that the people who were cheated during the 15 years of the RJD rule in the state cannot be cheated once again."

The BJP leader said that while Tejashwi was claiming to be undertaking this yatra to safeguard the Constitution, his parents had tarnished the Constitution during their rule by paying scant regard to the rules. He claimed that this very approach had led to a situation that Tejashwi's father (Lalu Prasad) was in jail while his mother and other family members were facing investigations in different cases.

The BJP leader went on to term the Tejashwi's yatra inauspicious and claimed that on the day he set off for Katihar, thehigh court in Ranchi refused to give bail to his father and sought records from the lower court.

Lalu's lawyer had moved the bail petition after his conviction in a lower court in one of the fodder scam cases. Pandey also saw a design in promotion of Rabri Devi as the national vice-president of the RJD and claimed that very soon she would be made the national president of the party as a decision on debarring convicted persons from holding the top post in any organisation was expected to come this month itself.

Lalu has been holding the post of national president of the RJD since its inception in 1997.