Congress, BJP MLAs' slugfest leads to chaos

HAZARIBAG: The foundation stone laying ceremony of the long-awaited Barhi drinking water on Friday was marred by warring BJP and Congress MLAs.
Uma Shankar Akela, BJP MLA from Barhi, and former Congress MLA Manoj Kumar Yadav got into a war of words on the dias in front of state minister Jaiprakash Bhai Patel.
Yadav started blaming the previous government, led by BJP, for failing to implement the Rs 16.5-crore project that was supposed to be taken up jointly by DVC and the Jharkhand government.
DVC provided Rs 9.5 crore for the porject.
He also blamed the present BJP MLA for this delay and listed Akela's faults for which "Barhi could not prosper".
Akela retaliated by calling Congress the mother of corruption. Supporters of the two leaders also clashed and pandemonium prevailed at the function.
Barhi SDO Bagmare Krishna Kumar, accompanied by police, escorted the two leaders to safety.
Patel said he was shocked at the incident and blamed both the parties for taking the credit in implementing the drinking water project, which is expected to benefit over 22,000 people, who are getting water from the Barakar river at present.
The minister said the project was implemented by the public health engineering department and he reached here only to lay the foundation stone for official function.
He said his purpose was to develop Barhi and Hazaribag and he was not here to take credit for development.