Nitish Kumar orders review of Tejashwi’s decisions, RJD miffed

Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has ordered a departmental review of the works sanctioned by his former deputy Tejashwi Yadav and two other leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), who were ministers before Kumar’s return to the BJP-led NDA.

Tejashwi held the portfolios of road construction, health and urban development and housing when Nitish was with the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance). Other departments under the scanner include the public health engineering department, then with RJD’s Lalit Yadav, and the mines department, then headed by RJD’s Ramanand Yadav.

On 13 February, Nitish Kumar while seeking a vote of confidence in the state legislative assembly had made damning charges against his rivals. “Paise ugahi kar rahe thee, sab ka jaanch karenge (they were making money, I will get it probed),” he said.

Then in the Opposition benches, RJD MLA Samir Mahaseth had challenged the chief minister to probe decisions taken during the entire 17-month period when his party, the Janata Dal (United) was running a coalition government with the RJD.

“RJD ministers did not get special treatment. We accepted Nitish ji as the CM and participated in review meetings of our departments chaired by him. Nitish ji should come out with a scorecard to show if BJP ministers were better or RJD ministers,” Mahaseth, who held the industries portfolio in the Mahagathbandhan government, told ThePrint.

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Nitish Kumar’s flip-flops

Like his political career, Nitish has made several U-turns vis-a-vis his stand on allegations of corruption against RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members. 

In 1994, when he formed the Samata Party along with George Fernandes, large withdrawals in the animal husbandry department during the Lalu regime were among the issues he cited to target the RJD. Lalan Singh and Shivanand Tiwari, who at that time were with Nitish, were among the petitioners who demanded a CBI probe into the fodder scam. 

But in 2013 when Nitish quit the BJP-led NDA, allegations of corruption against Lalu Prasad Yadav were put in cold storage. Again in 2017, when the CBI raided the residence of former chief minister and Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi in connection with the alleged IRCTC hotel lease scam, Nitish raised the issue again to target the then deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav. 

In the run-up to the 2020 assembly polls, when Tejashwi was promising 10 lakh government jobs to the youngsters of Bihar, Nitish took a swipe at him by asking whether the RJD would pay for it out of the wealth acquired by Lalu’s family.

Another such flip-flop was on display in 2022 when the ‘land for job’ scam hit headlines. “Whenever I am with Lalu ji, the BJP puts pressure on Lalu and family,” Nitish remarked.

An RJD MLA quipped that Nitish talks about allegations of corruption against Lalu and family “only when he is not with us”.

Asked about the latest order, a retired civil servant told ThePrint: “The bureaucratic setup has hardly changed. How can you expect the same principal secretary to review a decision he was a part of?”

Former Bihar chief secretary V. S. Dubey, however, felt that there was in essence no such rule stopping civil servants from reviewing past decisions. 

“The CM is entitled to review decisions taken by others and even his own decisions. A department is run by the orders of the minister and not the principal secretary, according to the rules of the executive. Even in a party, successive CMs and ministers have reviewed and even changed decisions made by their predecessors. I have been seeing it since 1966. Some reviews are conducted loudly and some silently,” Dubey told ThePrint.

(Edited by Tony Rai)