Millennium Post

No grouse over seating plan during Prakash Parv: Lalu

- OUR CORRESPOND­ENT

PATNA: RJD national president Lalu Prasad on Sunday said he has no complaint over not being allotted a seat on the dais during a Prakash Parv event here, though a top leader of his party and the Congress party had expressed displeasur­e over the matter.

“Why should I have any grievance? It was a spectacula­r arrangemen­t for the 350th Prakash Parv celebratio­n that brought good name to Bihar from across the globe,” he told reporters here.

Prasad said there are people who would always point out drawbacks and shortcomin­gs in any such mega programme.

“People always perform puja by sitting on the floor. Is puja performed by sitting on the chair?... And that was the ‘Guru ka darbar’,” he said.

RJD national vice-president Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Bihar Congress chief and education minister Ashok Choudhary, both constituen­ts of the grand alliance government in Bihar, had on Friday resented Prasad not being given a seat on the dais alongside Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

Former Union minister Lalu Prasad and his two minister-sons - Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav - sat on the floor in the VIP enclosure, with others.

Kumar, Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan and Governor Ram Nath Kovind shared the dais with the Prime Minister at the concluding function of the 350th Prakash Parv to celebrate the birth anniversar­y of 10th Guru Govind Singh on January 5.

“This (Lalu Prasad not accommodat­ed on the dais) has not gone down well with the people. Lalu Prasad was made to sit on the ground. Everybody praised Nitish Kumar for making grand arrangemen­ts. Was RJD not the part of the management for preparatio­ns and arrangemen­ts made for the prakash parva celebratio­ns?” Raghuvansh Prasad Singh had said expressing his anger a day after the function.

Asked about Singh’s comment, Prasad said it was the leader’s “personal opinion” on a particular issue.

Choudhary, the Bihar Congress chief, said, “It is Lalu Prasad’s magnanimit­y and his reply is a big riposte to the petty politics being played by the opposition parties”.

Asked on Sakshi Maharaj’s controvers­ial remark on population boom, the RJD chief said the BJP leader is “always involved in communalis­ing society” and he should be arrested under Goonda Act and sent to jail.

“Sakshi Maharaj is a very bad person. He is not a saint.

He is a vagabond person. He should be arrested under Goonda Act and sent to jail... He always tries to communalis­e society,” Prasad said.

“Those with four wives and 40 children are responsibl­e for the population boom in the country. Hindus are not responsibl­e for the increase in population,” Maharaj, BJP MP from Unnao in Uttar Pradesh, had said while addressing a “saint sammelan” in Meerut on January 6.

In reply to a query whether he also demands change in the date for presentati­on of aunion budget keeping in mind the elections in five states, RJD leader said, “People are demanding a change in the date for presentati­on of the budget. But they will not change it.”

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