Patna, Oct. 20: Former state JD(U) chief-turned-party rebel Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh used the birth anniversary of the first Bihar chief minister, Sri Krishna Si-nha, to breath fire on the present incumbent, Nitish Kumar.

Interestingly, Lallan used the platform of Congress lead-er and former union minister Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who had organised the function, to attack his former mentor. “So-me people compare Nitish wi-th Sri Krishna Sinha. But the comparison is thoroughly mi-splaced as Sri Babu opened schools and set up electric po-wer plants while Nitish is interested only in setting up billboards showing his pictures.”

Lallan’s diatribes against Nitish might have got sharper had union minister and Nationalist Congress Party boss Sharad Pawar, who too had been invited for the event, tur-ned up. Pawar stayed out from the meeting citing his pre-scheduled meeting. His message read out at the meeting had nothing against Nitish.

But Lallan had some sort of solace with another union minister and Congress leader Salman Khurshid turning up to take potshots on Nitish. “Bihar has not got good government in the past 20 years,” Khurshid said, suggesting that there was hardly any difference between the Lalu-Rabri regime that lasted 15 years and the Nitish government that replaced it nearly six years ago. But Khurshid did not name any leader.

Lallan’s stepped up criticism on Nitish has, apparently, brought to the fore the fact that the rebel JD(U) leader’s efforts to strike a rapprochement with the chief minister has failed. Sources said Lallan — once close to Nitish — tried hard to win the chief minister’s goodwill through his “friends” in the JD U. But Nitish appears to have rebuffed the rebel leader’s efforts.

The party has already suspended Lallan, Manganilal Mandal (Lok Sabha MP) and Upendra Prasad Kushwaha (Rajya Sabha MP) for their anti-party activities during the 2010 Assembly elections and has also sought the end of their membership from their respective Houses.

Lallan, a JD(U) MP from Munger, has apparently been trying to enter the Congress. His presence on Akhilesh’s platform also indicates that Lallan is desperate to join the Congress. But the Congress’s top leadership, busy in election-bound UP and other states, has so far not shown much interest in Lallan.

Showing solidarity with Lallan, Akhilesh, too, attacked Nitish over “poor law and order and lack of hospitals and good schools in the state”.

But Nagaland governor Ni-khil Kumar and West Delhi MP Mahabal Mishra confined their speeches to Sri Krishna and refrained from targeting Nitish or any other leader.