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Bihar former deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav requests govt to allow him retain bungalow
RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has cited precedence of some BJP leaders who were allowed to retain their bungalows when chief minister Nitish Kumar distanced himself from the NDA in July 2013.
Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav has requested the Bihar government to allow him retain the government bungalow allotted to him as deputy chief minister during the 20-month old Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) government, which ended in Bihar on July 26.
Yadav cited the precedence of BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi, who was allowed to retain his 1, Polo Road bungalow after chief minister Nitish Kumar distanced himself from the NDA in July 2013. BJP leaders Nand Kishore Yadav and Prem Kumar were also allowed to retain their respective bungalows after being out of power.
Yadav is entitled to a ministerial bungalow as leader of opposition in the Bihar legislative assembly. However, the government, this year, earmarked the 5, Desh Ratna Marg bungalow, where Yadav is currently staying, as the official residential bungalow of deputy chief minister. As such, it has been allotted to deputy chief minister Modi. Yadav was asked to swap bungalows with Modi (1, Polo Road).
The government has served eviction notices on Yadav, his brother and former health minister Tej Pratap Yadav, and 15 other former ministers of the RJD and Congress, who were part of the Grand Alliance, after expiry of the stipulated one-month period.
BJP was quick to react to Yadav’s August 31 letter to building construction minister Maheshwar Hazari and the chief minister’s secretariat. Taking potshots at Yadav, deputy CM Modi wondered what was in the bungalow that Yadav was so attached to it. He said it was strange that despite having amassed huge wealth in the last two-and-a-half years, Yadav was still keen to retain the government property.
Yadav, his sister Misa Bharti and mother Rabri Devi, a former chief minister of Bihar, are facing heat of the income tax department. The department had on August 29 summoned them to its office in Patna and asked them several uncomfortable questions about their source of income. Yadav had reportedly mentioned cricket as his source of income when IT sleuths asked him about it.
The Enforcement Directorate, on September 5, provisionally attached a farm house (26, Palam Farms, Bijwasan, New Delhi), of Bharti and her husband Shailesh Kumar.
It is believed that the government had spent huge money on repair and renovation of Yadav’s bungalow before he moved into it. Yadav, as deputy chief minister, also held the portfolio of building construction department, which is the custodian of government bungalows.
