Patna,(BiharTimes): Former Bihar minister and an old socialist veteran Shivanand Tiwari, who has virtually taken retirement from politics, on Saturday came out strongly in defence of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, who is under fire from senior, but isolated BJP leader, Sushil Kumar Modi on the land deal issue.
Talking to the media at his Raja Bazar house in the state capital Tiwari asked as to why Sushil Kumar Modi is raking up an old non-issue at press conferences and not approaching his own party’s government at Centre for action against the transfer of the Ranchi and Puri hotels of the railways to hotelier Kochars if it was an exchange for a land gifted to RJD chief Lalu Prasad by the Kochars––the owner of Chanakya Hotel in Patna.
“If SuMo has evidences to prove it was a quid pro quo, why is he not demanding a probe from the minister of railways, Suresh Prabhu, who belongs to his party?”
Tiwari further said: “Way back in 2008, the then water resources minister of Bihar Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lallan Singh, and I had shared this information with the media. Lallan later informed me, he and the then JD(U) president Sharad Yadav had also met the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with these documents a probe against Lalu’s property and scams in the railway. But nobody took cognizance and nothing came out of it. What is the need to raise the issue now,” he asked.
Recalling an old incident he said “Sushil Modi had once told the House that I had forced him to file the fodder scam case against Lalu.”“He made me so angry I chased him with a shoe. He is such a liar, he
even tried to implicate my son (Shahpur MLA Rahul Tiwari) in a BJP leader's Visheshwar Ojha murder. Shivanand asked why Sushil was feeling bad if both Raghunath Jha and Kanti Singh have accepted they gifted their plot to Lalu's family. Shivanand had served as a minister in both Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi and Nitish Kumar ministries.
