BJP demands Tejashwi Yadav’s resignation

On Monday, the opposition BJP in Bihar created a ruckus in the state assembly, demanding the resignation of Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav, against whom the CBI has filed a charge sheet in the land for jobs scam. No sooner had the House assembled on the inaugural day of the monsoon session, BJP chief whip Janak Ram rose in his seat and demanded the resignation of Yadav, who sat quietly in the treasury benches alongside his boss, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Proceedings for the day were adjourned minutes later, after obituary references, but the opposition party made it clear that it would keep pressing the issue. “We did not press the matter today in view of the solemnity of the occasion. But during the rest of the session, we will force the government to come clean on corruption”, Leader of the Opposition Vijay Kumar Sinha told reporters outside the House.
“The chief minister seems to have struck a compromise with corruption. He will be held to account for his acts of commission and omission”, said the BJP leader, whose party was stripped of power a year ago when Kumar, the JD (U)’s supreme leader, quit the NDA and joined Mahagathbandhan.
Earlier, Kumar reached the assembly with his deputy and the latter’s elder brother, Tej Pratap Yadav, a cabinet minister himself, in his car. The gesture was apparently aimed at sending out the signal that all is well within the ‘Mahagathbandhan, of which the RJD, founded and headed by the Yadav duo’s father Lalu Prasad, is the largest constituent.
However, when he was asked about the BJP’s plans to corner the government during the session, Kumar replied with a smirk, “Now leave that aside. You people seem to have been hijacked by one party”. Notably, the land for jobs scam pertains to a period when Yadav’s father was the Railway Minister, though he himself was a minor.
In 2017, when Yadav was enjoying his first tenure as the Deputy CM, his name cropped up in the land for the hotel scam, and Kumar snapped ties with the RJD-Congress combine, irked over the controversy that had engulfed his government.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav alleged on Sunday that the CBI’s chargesheet against him was a part of the BJP’s “tactics” to tarnish the reputation of its opponents. Talking to reporters upon his return from a long vacation, Yadav also rubbished speculations of a rift within the state’s ruling “Mahagathbandhan”, which he blamed on “media outlets acting as spokespersons of the BJP”.