retaliation time
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| (From left) RJD leaders Ram Kripal Yadav, Ram Chandra Purbey and Illiyas Hussain release the party’s report card for the government. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey |
RJD’s 18 questions to Nitish Kumar
Why has the BPL population gone up under your regime?
How has the law and order situation improved when the state has witnessed two serial blasts?
How can you claim to be secular when you allowed the RSS to spread its influence in the state?
Why did you allow the accused of massacres such as Laxmanpur Bathe to be acquitted?
Why have you left farmers at the mercy of private parties in selling their products?
Why have not teachers been recruited in schools and colleges?
How many closed sugar mills have you managed to reopen?
How much investment for industries has come under your regime?
What have you to say on rampant corruption in the MGNREGA?
Who is responsible for the Rs 8 crore scam in Patna collectorate?
What happened to the extremely backward class commission’s recommendations?
What happened to the common school system you promised?
What happened to the plans for rural electrification?
What happened to the 10-point programme you had announced for minorities?
Why is the state minority commission defunct?
What happened to the Eklavya award you had announced for sportspersons?
Has all your actions benefited the elite section of the society only?
Did you not try to monopolise the special status category for Bihar agitation?
Patna, Nov. 28: The RJD today issued a “people’s report card” asking the chief minister to seek a fresh mandate as “he has lost the people’s confidence at the ground level”.
“We are the real opposition. The BJP and the JD(U) are two sides of the same coin and are trying to confuse secular voters,” said state RJD president Ram Chandra Purbey challenging chief minister Nitish Kumar to reply to the 18 questions lobbed by the party.
Nitish released his report card on Monday upon completion of eighth year in office. This has triggered a series of report cards challenging the government’s achievements. The BJP, Congress and the LJP also issued their report cards. The RJD, which initially had no plan to issue such a document, appears to have second thoughts and put up a shoddily prepared one.
The report card was initially to be released by former chief minister Rabri Devi. However, senior party leaders Purbey, MP Ram Kripal Yadav and vice-president Illiyas Hussain released it as she was not keeping well.
The party, struggling to gain lost political ground in the state, especially with its chief Lalu Prasad in jail, finds itself sandwiched between the crossfire between the JD(U) and the BJP after the NDA split in June. “We have to reassert ourselves as the major opposition party,” said an RJD legislator.
Not surprisingly, Ram Kripal mocked the BJP’s report card against Nitish. “The BJP is an equal partner to the mess Nitish has created for Bihar,” he said stressing that the achievements claimed by Nitish were “nowhere visible at the grassroots”.
“If Bihar has developed so fast as Nitish claims then how is that the below poverty line (BPL) population has gone up by 16 per cent in the last eight years? Around 5 million people have been added to the BPL list since Nitish came to power,” said Purbey.
“The chief minister’s report card is a jugglery of statistics and deserves to be thrown into the dustbin,” Ram Kripal said.
The party also used the occasion to emphasise that its relationship with the LJP is going strong. The alliance has come under stress after the former minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh declared that the RJD would fight it alone in the next Lok Sabha polls.
“The LJP chief, Ram Vilas Paswan, still enjoys the support of an influential section of Dalits and the RJD can ill-afford to drop him at the time the party is desperately seeking an alliance with the Congress,” said a former minister.
