Former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh wrote three letters to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, listing three demands and signalling that he is likely to join his Janata Dal United.
Raghuvansh’s letters to Nitish demand slight amendments in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) for better impact, flag hoisting at Vaishaligarh on August 15 and January 26 to mark its importance as the first republic of the world, and bringing back the alms bowl of Lord Buddha from Afghanistan.
The socialist leader is undergoing treatment for breathing trouble and post-Covid problems at AIIMS New Delhi. He resigned from the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Thursday, but that is yet to be accepted by party chief Lalu Prasad.
“The MGNREGA Act provides that work would be done on land belonging to the government and the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Please bring an ordinance immediately to add that work could be done on the land of general farmers also under this Act to escape the model code of conduct for the forthcoming elections,” Raghuvansh wrote to Nitish.
He said that the government could pay half the wages under this new provision while the farmer concerned will pay the rest.
Such a provision would guarantee availability of workers to farmers, provide them labour subsidy, cut down on irregularities in the 100-day rural job guarantee scheme and reduce the burden of expenditure on the government. The number of workers for which a farmer would be eligible would be decided on the basis of his land holding.
“I had requested Union minister Virendra Singh about this and he had sent a joint secretary to meet me and understand more about it. A proposal was sent to the Niti Aayog about this but is pending there. Please write a letter to the Prime Minister, get the issue raised by the MPs in Parliament and get an amendment (in MGNREGA) passed,” Raghuvansh said.
It was Raghuvansh who as Union rural development minister in the then Manmohan Singh government had conceptualised and implemented the MGNREGA.
In another letter, Raghuvansh suggested that the chief minister hoist the national flag in Patna while the governor do the same at Vaishaligarh in Vaishali district on August 15 and vice-versa on January 26, because it is the first known republic of the world.
“The flag should be hoisted in the premises of Vaishaligarh (Vaishali fort). You (Nitish) should begin this from January 26, 2021. This will send a message to the world that Vaishali was the first republic. All formalities for this have been completed and a file in this regard is pending in the cabinet secretariat. The no-objection certificate from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has also arrived,” he wrote.The suggestion is significant because this means he believes the JDU, with its junior partner BJP, will win the Assembly polls and Nitish will continue as chief minister.
Ancient texts and archaeological evidences have revealed that Vaishali was a confederation of clan states in the 7th and 6th century BC and practiced a republican form of government, which was elected through ballots.
In his third letter to Nitish, Raghuvansh requested bringing back the alms bowl of Buddha from the Kabul museum.
“I had raised this issue in the Lok Sabha and the then external affairs minister S.M. Krishna had said that the ASI would trace the origin of the alms bowl, and bring it back to Vaishali. It was a parting gift by Lord Buddha to the people of Vaishali after spending his last monsoon stay there. However, the red-tape and factionalism prevalent in the ASI made it say that there was not enough evidence about its origin and throw a spanner in the works,” he wrote.
“You (Nitish) are getting a stupa worth Rs 300-400 crore constructed in Vaishali after acquiring land worth Rs 432 crore to house the relics of Lord Buddha. This (getting the alms bowl back) will be a very big thing,” Raghuvansh said in the letter.
He also wrote a letter to state water resources minister Sanjay Jha requesting him to get three pending flood protection work done in Muzaffarpur.
Meanwhile, Bhola Rai, another trusted colleague of Lalu, and two Congress MLAs — Poornima Yadav and Sudarshan — joined the JDU on Friday.
Rai was a three-time MLA from 1980 to 1995 from Vaishali’s Raghopur constituency, considered a pocket borough of Lalu and his family members. He left the seat for Lalu in 1995, who went on to win and retain the seat in the 2000 elections as well. Later Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi won from the seat in the 2005 polls. Their son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav is the present MLA from Raghopur.
JDU leader and Lok Sabha member Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, welcoming Rai to the party, said his resignation from the RJD shows that leaders who “sacrifice for the party are being insulted there”.