After hiatus, Lalu prepares to launch agitation to expose Nitish

Patna: Having stayed away from the rough and tumble of Bihar politics for more than one-and-a-half years, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad says he will focus on the state to expose the reality behind Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's so-called good governance.

"Now I will stay in Bihar and march to villages across the state to expose the real face of Nitish Kumar. I am here to stay," Lalu, who has been based in New Delhi for a while, told IANS at his residence here.

"I have chalked out a strategy to launch an agitation against the failures of Nitish Kumar's government by visiting villages along with RJD workers. I will now be in direct touch with common people," he said.

Lalu said he would undertake a march from Motihari district to Gaya, about 200 kilometres away, to reach out to the ‘aam admi' and gauge the people's mood. "I will not sit silent," the former chief minister said.

"Anger against Nitish's so-called good governance and development is increasing in Bihar. It was visible with the protests against the chief minister when he visited some districts during his sewa yatra last month and this month," Lalu claimed.

Lalu also said Kumar will no longer miss his absence in Bihar. It was a reference to Kumar's repeated statement that Lalu had become a non-resident Bihari as he mostly stayed in Delhi after RJD's debacle in the last assembly polls in 2010.

Lalu said the rule of his RJD was termed as jungle raj due to crimes, but wondered about the spiralling crime graph in Bihar under Kumar's rule.

"There is hardly a day that passes without murder, kidnapping, loot, rape and attack on the poorest people by a powerful section in the state. The law and order machinery has completely collapsed in the state," Lalu said.

He said RJD leaders and workers had been asked to raise public issues and consistently work at the grassroots.

He said people were fed up with the functioning of the government due to an arrogant bureaucracy, unprecedented rise in corruption and misutilisation of funds earmarked for MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and other welfare schemes.

"The state government is hell bent on suppressing big financial irregularities worth thousands of crores of rupees related to non-submission of bills. This is a government of scams and financial bungling. The RJD will expose it," he said.