"All the promises made by chief minister to the people of Bihar have fallen flat... in fact, he is a failure on all fronts", Prabhunath Singh said.
The RJD today received a shot in the arm ahead of the assembly polls in Bihar with rebel JD(U) leader Prabhunath Singh, once bitter critic of Lalu Prasad, joining the party with a large number of his supporters at a Janata Mahapanchayat here.
Amid thunderous applause from the audience, Singh, a Rajput leader, who had recently fallen out with chief minister Nitish Kumar while opposing the alleged move to provide legal teeth to sharecroppers in Bihar, held Lalu Prasad's hand and waved at the crowd.
Conspicuous by his absence in the Mahapanchayat organised by Singh, who was elected to Lok Sabha from Maharajganj thrice on JD(U) ticket, was LJP leader Ramvilas Paswan, who was away in New Delhi. Paswan had been invited by Singh.
Singh, who unsuccessfully contested the Lok Sabha polls from Maharajganj in the last general elections, was also founder of the Samata Party which was later rechristened as Janata Dal (United) under the leadership of George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar.
Singh, who is facing facing several criminal cases and trials in Chapra, Bhagalpur and Hazaribagh, went vitriolic on the chief minister. He alleged that Kumar had hijacked the JD(U) and was acting as a "dictator".
"All the promises made by chief minister to the people of Bihar have fallen flat... in fact, he is a failure on all fronts", Singh said. "A person like me can't work under a dictator", he said.
Stating that he decided to revive his old bonds with Lalu Prasad after 20 years as he felt that Prasad was "far better than Kumar", who he said was apparently trying to woo upper castes.
Nitish Kumar, he said, had refused to accept his repeated pleas to provide 10 per cent reservation to the economically-backward upper caste youths in jobs and other places.
Accusing Nitish Kumar government of being "neck-deep" in corruption, he alleged that public money worth more than Rs31,000 crore had been "looted" on technical grounds in the name of preparation of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) while people of the state continued to starve.
"Sushan Babu (a votary of good governance, Nitish Kumar) has turned a lootawan babu (a leader of loot)... people can't expect anything other than devastation from Nitish", he sarcastically remarked.
"Not not a single industry has been set up during the 57 month-long rule of Nitish in Bihar whereas the state government continues to claim having received proposals from private entrepreneurs worth over Rs one lakh crore for investment", he said.
Singh assured Lalu Prasad of extending full support for replacing the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.
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