RJD casting aspersions on judiciary on Lalu’s conviction, says JD(U)

PATNA: The Janata Dal (United) on Wednesday lashed out at the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for alleging that the conviction of its chief, Lalu Prasad, by a court in a fodder scam case was a “conspiracy”.

JD(U) general secretary RCP Singh also charged the RJD with “shamefully” casting aspersions on the judiciary by making such allegations.

The JD(U) Parliamentary Party leader also trashed the sympathetic comments of his party colleague and former speaker of the Bihar Assembly, Uday Narayan Chaudhary, in favour of Prasad over his conviction.

“The RJD leaders keep saying that they have full faith in the judiciary and that they respect its verdicts. But when a verdict affects them adversely, they shamefully say things which amount to pointing fingers at the judiciary itself,” Singh told reporters here.

“Nobody is going to take the RJD’S allegations of conspiracy seriously. People are wise enough to understand that this is the language spoken by those who indulge in corruption,” Singh, a close confidante of Bihar Chief Minister and JD(U) president Nitish Kumar, said.

He was responding to a query on the allegations levelled by RJD leaders, particularly its national vice-president, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, questioning the acquittal of former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra in the case, in which Prasad was convicted.

Singh has also been referring to a book authored by a retired IPS officer, which dealt with the multi-crore-rupee fodder scam in details, to buttress his claim that the CBI’S action against Prasad was politically motivated.

The RJD leaders, including Prasad’s son and Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Tejashwi Yadav, have been blaming the BJP and the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar for allegedly targeting Prasad and his family members.

The RJD accusation came in the wake of Prasad’s conviction by a special CBI court in Ranchi last Saturday in a fodder scam case, pertaining to the illegal withdrawal of Rs 89.27 lakh from the Deoghar treasury between 1991 and 1994, and the slapping of moneylaundering cases against his wife Rabri Devi, daughter Misa Bharti, son-in-law Shailesh and Tejashwi.

Asked if any disciplinary action was being contemplated against Chaudhary, who had yesterday come out in support of the RJD supremo and claimed that the latter stood to gain politically due to the court verdict, Singh said, “Serving him with a notice would be a waste of stationery.”

He, however, hinted that the former Assembly speaker was in cahoots with the opposition parties and said, “Everyone knows whose chariot he (Chaudhary) has been riding.”

Chaudhary has of late been critical of his own party. A couple of months ago, he had alleged that the JD(U)-BJP government in the state was “antireservation”. Recently, he had also met Arun Srivastava, an expelled JD(U) leader and a loyalist of former party president Sharad Yadav, who was recently disqualified from the Rajya Sabha.

Singh also said the JD(U) had launched a drive to strengthen its organisational structure, as a part of which training camps would be held next month, where blocklevel leaders would be asked to apprise the public of the state government’s social reform measures such as prohibition and the campaigns against dowry and child marriage.