Patna: RJD MLAs stormed into the well of the House on Friday waving a newspaper report that said the CBI's legal cell had declared no case could be made out against Lalu Prasad as then railway minister for the transfer of two railway hotels in Ranchi and Puri to a private hotelier.
They shouted slogans, alleging that the Centre was trying to frame Lalu. The CBI has lodged a case in which both Lalu and leader of the Opposition in the Assembly, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, were made accused. RJD MLAs disrupted House proceedings both in the first and the second sitting.
"Read the news properly. It says investigations found that your leader was responsible for the irregularities," water resources minister Rajiv Ranjan a.k.a. Lallan Singh said just before the Assembly was adjourned for the day without taking up a single issue.
The case relates to transfer of two hotels in 2006 in exchange for prime land in Patna to a company run by family members of his close associate, Prem Chand Gupta of Delight Marketing Co Ltd in 2004. The land was later transferred to a company wholly owned by Tejashi and other family members. In 2017, then leader of the Opposition Sushil Kumar Modi held a series of press meetings to say Lalu and family were constructing an illegal mall costing over Rs 500 crore on the same plot. After that the CBI raided Lalu's official residence in Patna and the JDU asked Tejashwi to come clean on the issue, culminating in the collapse of the Grand Alliance government.
Fresh from electoral victories in Araria and Jehanabad, Tejashwi accused chief minister Nitish Kumar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having a hand in the CBI FIR against Lalu in the hotel deal. "My family is continuously being targeted in the railway tender case but the truth has come out..., that there is no evidence against my father," Tejashwi said. "The CBI's legal cell has categorically said there was no evidence of my father giving railway tender as quid pro quo. If there was no evidence, it means the FIR against Lalu ji and me was lodged under pressure from Prime Minister Modi and chief minister Nitish."
Tejashwi said Nitish wanted to go to the BJP from day one; that is why the FIR against him as well. "I was just an excuse."
But deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi alleged that RJD members were making a hue and cry to hide their guilt. "The matter first came up when a delegation consisting of Shivanand Tiwari and Lallan Singh and led by Sharad Yadav handed over a memorandum to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2008, demanding a probe into Lalu's land deals," Sushil said. "The then PM sent the memorandum to the railways, which sent the matter to the CBI. The land was then not in the name of Lalu's family members. But when the matter came up again in 2017, the land had been transferred to the firm owned by Lalu and his family. The CBI probe found enough evidence against Lalu on how he tampered with the tendering process to ensure Sujata Hotels Pvt Ltd got the bid. Now it is a matter of days before the CBI will file a chargesheet."
