Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad on Saturday proclaimed that the RJD-Lok Janshakti Party “Bihar bandh” scheduled for January 28 would be bigger in scale than the Socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan’s “Total Revolution” clarion call during the 1975 Emergency.
Branding his bandh as a war against the Nitish Kumar government’s policies and the soaring prices of essential commodities, Mr. Prasad said the movement would go on until the prices come down to what they were six months ago.
Speaking to media persons after filing his nomination papers for the post of RJD president, Mr. Prasad said the RJD would launch the movement in phases and also stage a “jail bharo andolan”.
Mr. Prasad said Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar alone could not be held responsible for the skyrocketing prices of essential commodities and that the Centre collectively was to blame for this.
Stating that measures taken by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi to control hoarding and black marketing across the State had proved “utterly ineffectual”, the RJD leader alleged that there had been “at least 500 hunger deaths in the State and that more people were dying due to the prevailing cold wave conditions as the Administration was not providing the poor with vital items like woollens”.
Mr. Prasad charged that “more and more liquor shops were being opened in villages and that education had stagnated throughout the State”.
“Education is in a sorry state in Bihar. The quality of primary and secondary education has gone to the dogs. Not a single medical college has been opened during his [Nitish’s] tenure,” said Mr. Prasad, adding, “There is widespread corruption in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme due to which people have not been getting any work.”
Criticising the NDA government’s policies, Mr. Prasad said not a single sugar mill had been opened in the State till date and there had been no new investments
