With Lalu busy attending court cases RJD appears confused

Sachchidanand Jha

Patna : With all its important members including party chief Lalu Prasad, his wife and former CM Rabri Devi, his younger son and Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejaswi Yadav, and daughter and Rajya Sabha Member Dr Misa Bharti, on CBI, Enforecement Directorate (ED) and Income-Tax (IT) radar, the RJD is facing a major crisis notwithstanding the success of its `BJP Bhagao Desh Bachao’ rally at Patna on August 27, 2017.

Lalu has kept shuttling between Patna and Ranchi for the past two months facing trial in four fodder scam cases in CBI courts in the Jharkhand Capital. He is not able to visit different parts of Bihar as much as he would like to due to his preoccupation with court cases in Ranchi. Obviously, he is not among the party workers as much as in the past. The CBI also booked him, Rabri and Tejaswi and others in land for hotel scam on July 5, 2017. The CBI had also conducted raid at Rabri Devi’s residence on July 7 and quizzed her and her son Tejaswi.

The ED on September 5 attached Dr Misa Bharti and her husband’s Farm  House at Bijwasan in Delhi in a money laundering case registered against them. The IT has sealed 12 property of the family. Senior BJP leader and Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi (SuMo) recently alleged that Rabri and Tejaswi own several property including flats. Tejaswi and Rabri were recently also quizzed by IT for several hours at Patna. Tejaswi too charged SuMo with buying two flats in Ghaziabad and Noida worth over Rs 1 crore but the charge lacked sting as the amount involved in it was too small.

Tejaswi never tires of claiming that although he is only 28 year old, the BJP fears him. But, he has so far not  explained to the people from where he got his assets at such a young age and what was his source of income. After all, Tejaswi was elected to Bihar assembly only in November 2015. He has mostly been trading political barbs with CM Nitish Kumar and SuMo. Tejaswi, who aspires to become the chief minister as soon as possible, appears to be a novice as far as fighting political battles go.

With SuMo recently informing Bihar legislative council that it was during the RJD regime in 2003 that the tranfer of government funds into Srijan Mahila Vikas Sahyog Samiti’s account began and CM Nitish Kumar handing over the probe into Rs 664 crore Srijan fund to the CBI, the RJD has suddenly become subdued on  on this scam. The CBI probe into the scam has begun. Incidentally, at the August 27 RJD rally, Nitish appeared to be the target of Lalu and other speakers not the BJP.