Patna,(BiharTimes): The ruling Janata Dal (United) on Sunday turned the table on Bharatiya Janata Party on the issue of gifts distributed to MLAs and MLCs by different departments.

The deputy leader of JD(U) in the Assembly, Shyam Rajak, said this is not for the first time and not only in Bihar Assembly that such gifts are distributed. They are distributed in Lok Sabha and other states too, including the BJP ruled ones, like Jharkhand.

Why not the BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi take initiative in this direction.

“Not only that such gifts were distributed by all the 11 BJP ministers, including finance minister SuMo, when they used to share power with the Janata Dal (United) between Nov 24, 2005 and June 16, 2013,” said Rajak adding that Sushil Modi only wants to seek media publicity.

Taking the same line JD(U) vice-president Nihora Prasad Yadav asked if Sushil Modi is so concerned about the teachers’ salary, why he and other members of his party accepted the gifts?

He claimed salary payment to school-teachers used to remain pending for months even when Sushil Modi was the finance minister. Why did not he stop distribution of gifts among the legislators in those years?

He dubbed it as a “low-level politics” being played by the BJP leaders.

It needs to be recalled that after media highlighted the news Sushil Modi on Saturday tweeted that he, along with state party chief Mangal Pandey and leader of opposition in the state Assembly, Prem Kumar, would be returning the gifts.

The gifts distributed by various departments were accepted by 240 out of 243 MLAs. Only three CPI ML legislators, as per the party line, refused to accept the gifts.