India News | Tejashwi Describes ED Raids at Close Aide's Premises as Harassment
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Friday alleged that the ED raids on the premises of his close aide and former Bihar minister Alok Mehta were aimed at causing "harassment" to the opposition party.
Patna, Jan 10 (PTI) RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Friday alleged that the ED raids on the premises of his close aide and former Bihar minister Alok Mehta were aimed at causing "harassment" to the opposition party.
Talking to reporters, Yadav, a former deputy chief minister who is now the leader of the opposition, also said that the central agencies were acting at the instance of the ruling BJP at the Centre.
"The raids were not surprising. I am not worried. It may be recalled that I had once invited ED and CBI to set up offices at my house since it would make things easier for them," he said.
The RJD leader, whose family is on the ED radar in land for jobs scam, pertaining to the period when his father Lalu Prasad was Railway Minister, asserted "these things are not unexpected from the BJP, which believes in causing harassment to opponents. But we are going to take them on in assembly elections due later this year".
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Training his guns at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is now in the NDA, Yadav pointed out "while he was our ally, his close aides (Union minister) Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lalan and (state minister) Vijay Kumar Chaudhary had to witness their close aides being similarly hounded out by the central agencies".
The young leader claimed that Kumar, who heads the JD(U), has lost his grip on the state's bureaucracy which, he alleged, was busy collecting "DK tax" upon directions of "retired officers" who called the shots.
The allusion was to a retired senior officer who has, upon, superannuation, been made a top aide of the chief minister.
Yadav, however, made light of the controversy over former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's claim that "fake voters from Bihar and UP" were being brought into the city where assembly polls are due next month.
"If people from other states settle in a new place, their names will have to be included in voters' list. Kejriwal's remark was in the context of deletions and additions in the electoral roll, just ahead of polls, for the benefit of BJP-ruled NDA, as was seen in Maharashtra recently," the RJD leader said.
"It is not something we should cry hoarse about," said the RJD leader, whose party, like Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), is an INDIA bloc constituent.
He also frowned upon the controversy over his earlier remark that the INDIA bloc was "only for 2024 Lok Sabha polls".
"I was asked by journalists as to whether AAP and Congress fighting together in Delhi was a sign of a rift in the bloc. I pointed out that the two parties had agreed to contest only Lok Sabha elections together," said Yadav.
"They fought separately in Punjab, another AAP-ruled state. Similarly, the Congress fought against the Left in Kerala and West Bengal, they did not have an alliance with Mamata Banerjee's TMC. But at the end of the day, we are all allies and part of the INDIA bloc," he added.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)