Tejashwi Yadav in a tweet said Bihar will get nothing by personal attacks on me.

Patna:

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Friday slammed the BJP and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for “personal attacks” on him, asking them to focus instead on real issues like “unemployment, law & order and migration”.

“Bihar will get nothing by personal attacks on me,” the RJD leader said in a tweet.

“We are used to these derogatory attacks & inflammatory rhetorics from last 30 years from all of you. Why did you stop updating about corona cases, health management, unemployment, quarantine centres & poor migrant’s issues?”

His counterattack came a day after Bihar Information and Public Relations Department Minister Neeraj Kumar accused RJD supremo Lalu Prasad of getting land registered in the name of his son Tej Pratap Yadav, when he was a minor, by promising people government job.

“Even after being in power for 15 years, your political employment in my family’s name says you’ve nothing to showcase. Your disastrous term will end very soon. It’s about time to pull down the facades and let the people of Bihar know about your immortality & corruption,” Tejashwi said in another tweet.

He went on to add, “Nitish Kumar & BJP must concentrate on real ground issues vis-a-vis unemployment, law & order, migration, labourers, corruption, communalism, governance, development, education and health infrastructure etc. This will help Bihar and therefore needs to be addressed urgently.”

Neeraj Kumar had also alleged that Lalu’s “greed” for acquiring benami properties was evident from the fact that he got land registered in the name of “a third unknown son Tarun Kumar Yadav, whose whereabouts are not known to anyone”.

Both RJD and Tejashwi’s elder sister and Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti have said that Tarun Kumar Yadav is Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and that this fact has been mentioned in an affidavit too.

Bharti’s clarification on Tarun Prasad Yadav was made during a TV interview. Local TV news channels are also showing a video clip of a programme aired several years ago in which Lalu Prasad is seen with his family members.

In the programme, Tejashwi is seen introducing himself. “Hi, I am Tarun and studying in class VII”.

RJD MLA Bhola Yadav, who is a close confidant of Lalu Prasad’s family, said that the affidavit furnished by Tejashwi during the 2015 assembly elections read “Tejashwi Prasad Yadav alias Tarun Kumar Yadav”.

“He (Neeraj Kumar) is hurling allegations at (RJD) on what basis?” the MLA said in a video message on RJD’s WhatsApp group.

Condemning the minister’s statement, the RJD MLA demanded that he should apologise for spreading “lies”.

Not a single property he mentioned is benami, the RJD leader claimed. In fact, all the properties have been mentioned since 1996 to the CBI, the Election Commission and Income Tax authorities, he added.

Neeraj Kumar, meanwhile, stood by his allegations and dared Tejashwi to file a defamation suit against him if his accusations were false and baseless.

He also questioned how Tejashwi could show the property in his election affidavit without first getting it registered in the name of Tarun Kumar Yadav.

Interestingly out of the two properties at Phulwaria village in Gopalganj district that were registered in 1993, Tejashwi had mentioned details of only one in his election affidavit.

Tej Pratap Yadav, too, did the same with regard to the two properties.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)