Tejashwi ridicules Nitish claim of Bihar progress under NDA rule

Patna: Amid CM Nitish Kumar making repeated claims during his Samriddhi Yatra that Bihar made tremendous progress in every sector under the NDA regime, his principal rival and RJD's national working president, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, on Thursday ridiculed the claim, alleging that the state “failed” on all parameters during the 21 years of NDA rule.

Turning to social media, Tejashwi said the state lagged behind in almost every development indicator in the past 21 years, but no one in the govt took responsibility for it. “In 21 years of NDA govt, Bihar is the worst performer in all standards, criteria, and indices of development,” Tejashwi wrote on X, accusing the CM of running the administration through “bureaucratic control, state resources and caste politics”.




He said Bihar is a unique state where the NDA’s double-engine govt was in power for decades, yet the state still performed poorly across several socio-economic indicators, such as literacy, per capita income, farmers' income, power consumption, health facilities and the highest unemployment. “Bihar is the poorest state in the country, has the highest migration, the highest levels of crime and corruption, the highest unemployment, the highest level of multidimensional poverty and the highest school dropout rate in the country, the lowest literacy rate in the country, and the state has the lowest per capita income in the country,” he wrote.

Tejashwi alleged that despite the state being the lowest on all development parameters, it was ahead of other states in terms of buying expensive gas, expensive electricity and expensive fuel, while buying property here was also more expensive than in Delhi and Mumbai.

Reacting sharply to his remarks, panchayati raj minister Deepak Prakash said Tejashwi should have looked at the situation prevailing 20 years back before making such comments. “The state progressed a lot in the past two decades. Tejashwi should have properly reviewed the situation before making attacks on the govt,” Prakash, who happens to be the son of RLM President Upendra Kushwaha, told reporters.