Lalu: Show flood relief accounts
By returning the Kosi flood relief money of Rs 5 crore to Gujarat, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) may have given the RJD-LJP, the state’s main Opposition combine, a bigger handle than they hoped for to beat up the ruling NDA in poll-bound Bihar.
Even as the gulf between the JD(U) and the BJP widened a step further on Sunday, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav heightened his attacks on both Nitish Kumar and deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the BJP by alleging that huge amounts of flood relief money was either misappropriated or simply kept unutilised despite the trauma suffered by hundreds of thousands of flood victims in Bihar’s northern districts.
Bringing the emotive Kosi floods issue back to the ongoing political debate, Mr Yadav asked the state government to declare the total amount of flood relief money it received from various sources and the status of their utilisation so far. Mr Yadav levelled oblique allegations that Sushil Modi might have misused some of the aide money and materials received by the government in the wake of the August 2008 floods.
“It was not money alone that Narendra Modi sent. He also sent trucks full of clothes from Gujarat and his relative Sushil Modi received them here. Where did they all go? Did Sushil Modi sell them in his readymade shop or distribute them or what? The government must reveal how much money came from everywhere and where it was spent,” said Mr Yadav.
He displayed some photographs of Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr Narendra Modi speaking amiably at the Ludhiana NDA rally in May 2009 and dared the BJP and the JD(U) to go their separate ways if they had real self-respect. “The biggest culprit is Sushil Modi. Does he have self-respect? If the BJP has self-respect, it must contest the polls on its own strength,” said Mr Yadav.
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