Patna, Sept. 22 (PTI): Chief minister Nitish Kumar today reacted sharply to Mulayam Singh Yadav questioning his secular credentials for being with the BJP for 12 years, asking whether the SP boss was "the vice-chancellor of the University of Secularism".

"Am I a research scholar and he (Mulayam) a vice-chancellor of the University of Secularism that I am asking for a certificate of secularism from him?" Nitish asked in a hard-hitting comment on Mulayam while speaking at the function of a private TV channel in Patna.

"I am a product of the school of Loknayak Jaya Prakash Narayan and Ram Manohar Lohia and need no certificate on secularism from anybody," he said.

Nitish accused Mulayam of "ending all future possibilities of the coming together of Janata parivar."

The Samajwadi Party had walked out of the Janata parivar in Bihar following differences over the number of seats given to it for the Assembly elections and reportedly over Nitish's "tilt" towards the Congress. The party had been given five seats by the JDU-RJD-Congress alliance and now, has formed a third front.

While the chief minister was scathing in his remark on the SP chief, Lalu Prasad was not so harsh in his comments on Mulayam, who he described as "an elderly samdhi". Lalu's youngest daughter, Raj Lakshmi, is married to Mulayam's grandnephew Tej Pratap Yadav.

"Anybody can contest elections anywhere. But does his party have any standing in Bihar?... It's like RJD contesting 200 seats in Uttar Pradesh. Can it (SP) win even one seat?" Lalu quipped.

"If he speaks more, I will give five dhotis hued in yellow colour to him," Lalu said in a lighter vein, adding that differences within family members were nothing new in politics, referring to parting of his brothers-in-law.